CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -TOKYO – Water has been found in an asteroid sample collected by Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe, marking the first such discovery and shedding light on how the Earth’s oceans may have formed.

Detailed explanation-2: -In Depth: Hayabusa2 Hayabusa2 is a Japanese spacecraft that explored asteroid Ryugu (162173) from June 2018 to November 2019. It dispatched a series of landers and a penetrator, and it collected multiple samples from the asteroid. JAXA launched Hayabusa2 in December 2014 to collect samples from Ryugu.

Detailed explanation-3: -Hayabusa, series of Japanese spacecraft that explored asteroids. The first, Hayabusa, studied the asteroid Itokawa and returned a sample container of dust grains to Earth in 2010.

Detailed explanation-4: -Hayabusa2 (Japanese: 2, lit. ‘Peregrine falcon 2’) is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese state space agency JAXA. It is a successor to the Hayabusa mission, which returned asteroid samples for the first time in June 2010.

Detailed explanation-5: -Samples of asteroid Ryugu, which were brought to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft, have been found to have dust grains that are older than the sun.