Source: The Japan Times
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Thursday it has collected a trace amount of gas, possibly vaporized material from asteroid surface samples, from inside the tiny capsule jettisoned by the Hayabusa unmanned space probe earlier this month.
JAXA said it will thoroughly analyze the gas.
The capsule was picked up June 14 in the desert around Woomera in southern Australia following the probe’s successful seven-year round-trip to the asteroid Itokawa, about 300 million km from Earth.
If the capsule contains substance from the asteroid, it would be an extremely valuable sample to help understand the origin and evolution of the solar system, even if the amount is small, JAXA said.
According to JAXA, the gas also could have come from either the atmosphere of the Earth or some device parts of the space probe.
It will still take about a week to visually examine the inside of the capsule to find out if it contains sand from the asteroid, JAXA said.
JAXA will soon start dismantling the 40-cm capsule and examine each part.
Even if no materials from the asteroid are detected, all the parts will be preserved in vacuum containers because new technologies may enable scientists in the future to detect extremely small amounts of materials, JAXA said.
Hayabusa, launched in May 2003, made an unprecedented round trip to an astronomical body other than the moon.
As it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the probe burned up. But it had successfully released the special heat-resistant capsule, which was retrieved at the Australian desert, apparently undamaged.
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