Samples of the asteroid Ryugu contain bits of stardust that predate the birth of our solar system.
Slivers of Ryugu material, snagged by the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to come from the solar system’s frozen fringes, rather than from the asteroid itself, scientists report July 14 in Science Advances. These foreign fragments could illuminate details of the solar system’s history.
Finding these fragments “is really unique,” says cosmochemist Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It’s showing us a new type of material, but also telling us about the dynamics of material from the outer solar system.”
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