A Japanese capsule that brought samples from an asteroid to Earth at the beginning of this month appears to have taken even more.
There is also gas from space in the cargo hold. It is the first time that such gases have appeared on Earth in this way.
The Hayabusa2 (Peregrine Falcon2) probe was launched six years ago. It flew to the space rock Ryugu, which orbits the sun.
There he took samples from the surface and the subsoil and flew them back to Earth. In early December, the capsule plunged into a vast expanse of southern Australia as planned.
After landing, the cargo hold was scanned. It showed that there was gas in it. Its composition did not match our atmosphere, so it had to come from somewhere else.
The gas evaporated, and the capsule was shipped to Japan, where the same gas was found again. This indicates that the gas is emanating from the asteroid’s bits of ground in the cargo hold.
The soil samples on board are 4.6 billion years old. They can teach scientists more about the birth of our solar system and the origin of life on Earth.
