Scientists have managed to determine the long time of an asteroid , thanks to tiny molecule of it that were returned to Earth almost a decennary ago .
The sampling were returned by the Japanese ballistic capsule Hayabusa , launch in 2003 to visit the asteroid Itokawa . Hayabusa was design to scoop material from the asteroid and make for it to Earth , but a nonstarter of its assembling system meant it only brought back about1,500 grains , each about 10 micrometers in size .
The mission also experienced anengine failure , gimp home age later than project in 2010 . But against all the betting odds , the flyspeck sample distribution it collected from the asteroid survived , re - entering our atmosphere in a capsule and being pick up from the South Australian outback .
Now in a newspaper put out inScientific Reports , scientists from Osaka University in Japan have used that laughably minor sample to make an interesting finding . They ’ve been able-bodied to exploit out how old the Itokawa asteroid is .
Theirfindingsshow that Itokawa comes from an unknown parent asteroid that formed 4.6 billion years ago at the sunrise of the Solar System . About 1.5 billion years ago , that parent asteroid crashed into another asteroid and was destroyed , damp into small pieces – including trustworthy old Itokawa .
“ [ W]e purpose that an acute impact result on Itokawa ’s parent consistence and reassembly happen within the asteroid master belt and that its by - mathematical product , Itokawa , must have pass on the ordering of thou of million year in the main belt , ” the researchers write in their paper .
To make the determination , the scientist read the Itokawa particles returned to Earth and focused on a few micrometer gauge of phosphate material . They then looked at the amount of lead and atomic number 92 in the particles . By notice their decay charge per unit and the crystallisation of the orthophosphate , the scientist were able-bodied to pinpoint when the parent asteroid formed and when Itokawa rive . Which is passably amazing .
Almost all of the near - Earth asteroids in our Solar System were formed in a similar way , with a parent bodybreaking upat some point in the past . We ’re doing our best to track back the account of asteroids , but it ’s a tricky business .
So working out the history of Itokawa can say us more about this specific family . And it can tell us more about where asteroid like this come from , and what might become of them in the future .
Itokawa ’s future might not be too great for us , idea , with the researchers note it “ will jar with the Earth within a million years and/or be destroyed by space wearing . ” Ah .
