I hope they are careful with the samples from Ryugu, they could contain an alien virus that would threaten all human life on Earth.
BEHOLD! Japan's Hayabusa2 probe left human imprints on ASTEROID SAND
Astroboffins have analysed what happened when the Japanese probe Hayabusa2 shot a 2kg Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) at asteroid Ryugu in 2019. Hayabusa2 unloaded the SCI with the intention of creating a crater we could study to figure out what asteroids are made of. The analysis of the SCI's impact, published in Science, …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 26th March 2020 11:31 GMT oiseau
Threat
Have you seen Daniel Espinosa's movie "Life"?
Although a bit far fetched in many aspects, it left me wondering about just how much thought, peer review and control is actually going into the handling of whatever is brought back to Earth from space.
For what we know, it could well end up being more than just asteriod sand.
O.
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Friday 27th March 2020 10:24 GMT phuzz
Re: Threat
Well, the wiki article on Planetary Protection should answer most of your questions in detail, but the short answer is lots of thought and peer review.
Of course, it goes both ways. Scientists want to keep their samples contained so that there's no risk of them being contaminated by terrestrial stuff.
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Thursday 26th March 2020 09:22 GMT Neil Barnes
Thanks for the embiggenment
Impressive to see just how long it takes (i.e. just how low the gravity is) for the ejecta to think about settling.
@Dunstan V - I'm not convinced that the leaving of the mark was the primary cause, but merely a byproduct of a scientific measurement. If one takes the view that one should never make a mark anywhere, no matter how remote nor how 'unchanged', one would never get out of bed (and one's bed would not be in a house to keep the rain off).
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Thursday 26th March 2020 14:48 GMT Martin Gregorie
To see the full story, go here:
This URL: http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/topics/20200320_science/ points to a complete description of the experiment and several more illustrations. Its definitely worth reading.