The first data and images from the MASCOT rover, which landed on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu last week, indicate not an unusually small amount of dust on this celestial body, the reason for which remains a mystery to scientists, DLR reports.
“The surface of the asteroid turned out to be even crazier than we expected. The most surprising thing was that we did not find large accumulations of regolith, which, in theory, is impossible - cosmic erosion should have generated large amounts of dust,”says Ralf Jaumann, research director of the mission at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
The unmanned station Hayabusa-2 was launched into space in early December 2014 to study, collect and return samples from the asteroid Ryugu. Scientists hope that it will return the first 100% "pure" samples of the solar system's primary matter to the earth.
The Japanese vehicle reached its target in early June and began a lengthy procedure of deceleration and rendezvous with the asteroid. Having received the first images and data on the structure of the surface and subsoil of Ryugu, the probe began to prepare for the procedure for soil sampling.
In addition, Hayabusa-2 delivered three descent vehicles to the asteroid - two Japanese MINERVA-II1 rovers, analogs of which were sent to the Itokawa asteroid together with Hayabusa-1, and the European vehicle MASCOT. Robots Rover-1A and Rover-1B were successfully dropped to the surface of Ryugu at the end of September.
The intricate landing procedure for their European cousin began last Monday and a successful landing took place Wednesday morning. As noted in the DLR, the descent of MASCOT was ideal from the point of view of the pilots of the mission and its scientific "half", which allowed the robot to begin research almost immediately and establish communication with the Hayabusa-2.
The robot successfully solved all the scientific tasks of the mission, collecting all the necessary data and images to uncover the secrets of Ryugu geology and study samples of the primary matter of the solar system. Having spent about one asteroid "day" on this, MASCOT worked on the surface of the asteroid for two more days, making several jumps on its surface and collecting several additional data sets.
Hayabusa 2 recently finished transmitting the data collected by the rover, and Jaumann and his team began exploring the mysteries of the asteroid and the history of MASCOT's wanderings on its surface. Even now, as noted by planetary scientists, we can say that they have come across a lot of new and at the same time extremely interesting mysteries.
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For example, at all eight points that MASCOT touched during its jumps on the surface of Ryugu, scientists found a large number of giant cuboid and simply angular blocks and boulders, whose dimensions in some cases reached about a hundred meters. How they originated and what they consist of is not yet clear.
In addition, the scientists found that the density of Ryugu matter was unexpectedly low, noticeably less than that of similar meteorites, the so-called carbonaceous chondrites, which are periodically found in Antarctica and Australia. These differences, as noted by Yaumann, can be associated with both the different origins of Ryugu and these "heavenly stones", and with how the matter of asteroids changes when falling to Earth.
An analysis of the entire array of data collected by MASCOT at various points on the surface of the asteroid, scientists hope, will help uncover these mysteries and get a better understanding of how the primary matter of the solar system was arranged.