The Hayabusa 1 mission took samples of the asteroid Itokawa.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Scientists found organic materials in samples from the asteroid Itokawa. Asteroid samples Itokawa taken during the first Hayabusa mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2010. This discovery provides a new understanding of how Earth formed.
Reporting from universetoday, On Friday, a team from Royal Holloway, part of the University of London, said organics had been found in meteorites before. However, Hayabusa marks the first time an “S-type” asteroid sample has been observed to contain organic molecules.
More interestingly, the team led by Doctor Queenie Chan found that there are two distinct types of organics in the single grain of the asteroid they could study known as the “Amazon.” Some of the organics have been heated to temperatures over 600 degrees. Meanwhile, other organics that are located very close to superheated organic matter do not undergo such a heating process.
These findings suggest that the asteroid continues to pick up organic material as it traverses the solar system after a warming event that only burned a portion of that organic material. Such dynamic changes observed in Amazonian organic matter mean asteroids are more likely to pick up material during their travels, and therefore more likely to store it on Earth.
S-type asteroids are the most common form of meteorites. There is an additional possibility that some of the asteroids that hit Earth billions of years ago had these life-forming chemicals in them.
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