SOLAR SYSTEM

Detailed explanation-1: -Artist depiction of Hayabusa docked with asteroid Itokawa to collect surface samples. The asteroid Itokawa is so small and the surface gravity is so low, the spacecraft wasn’t able to really land on it; instead, it “docked” with the asteroid.

Detailed explanation-2: -Hayabusa2 is a follow-up to Japan’s original Hayabusa mission, which was the first spacecraft to take samples from an asteroid, and was also the first mission to successfully land and take off from an asteroid. It returned samples from asteroid 25143 Itokawa to Earth on June 13, 2010.

Detailed explanation-3: -The sample had a fine, uniform texture, and didn’t contain any chondrules – molten spherical droplets usually found in carbonaceous chondrites. This may suggest that Ryugu is the parent body of a type of meteorite called a CI chondrite – which are so rare that only five have ever been found on Earth.

Detailed explanation-4: -NASA’s Galileo mission was the first spacecraft to fly past an asteroid. It flew past asteroid Gaspara in 1991 and Ida in 1993. NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR-Shoemaker) mission studied asteroids Mathilde, and Eros.