Home delivery for two very precious fragments of the asteroid Ryugu, finally arrived from Japan in the laboratories of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome: the two tiny grains weigh a few milligrams, but will allow us to reconstruct the history of Ryugu’s evolution in its 4 billion years of life, also providing clues about the material that gave rise to the early Solar System and the Earth. The priceless cargo was taken over by the group coordinated by Ernesto Palomba who, in homage to Japanese culture, renamed the two fragments Kiki and Totoro, like the characters of as many animated films by the master Hayao Miyazaki.
The Hayabusa2 mission of the Japanese Space Agency Jaxa explored the asteroid Ryugu in 2019, obtaining detailed images of the surface and taking several samples then returned to Earth with a capsule, for a total of five grams of material. Two of these fragments have been assigned to the INAF research group, the only Italian proposal accepted by Jaxa. Each grain is placed inside a particular steel container filled with nitrogen, the purpose of which is both to preserve the sample by avoiding contamination, and to allow safe transport.
Source: Ansa
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