Eight years ago today, on 3 October 2018 at 03:58 CEST, DLR's MASCOT lander separated from Japan's Hayabusa2 and landed on asteroid Ryugu six minutes later. Its battery lasted over 17 hours, beyond the planned 16: three asteroid days and two asteroid nights.

#MASCOT #Ryugu #Hayabusa2

On 21 September 2018, Hayabusa2 released MINERVA-II1 rovers Rover-1A and Rover-1B at Ryugu — the world's first asteroid rover landing. Ryugu's gravity was too weak for wheels, so they hopped. JAXA confirmed first autonomous movement and image capture on an asteroid surface. #Hayabusa2 #Ryugu #JAXA

#Asteroid #Ryugu's dust reveals #nitrogen's slow #concentration into #complex #molecules

Pristine Ryugu samples reveal N-bearing minerals that acted as slow-cooking chemical reactors, hinting at how asteroids delivered life's building blocks to Earth scitechupdates.com/a...

New #Ryugu science!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📰 Asteroid Ryugu's dust reveals nitrogen's slow concentration into complex molecules

Nitrogen is a key ingredient in the biomolecules that form the building blocks of life.

Source: Phys.org | Read story

💬 Key global update — what is your view on this?

#NewsBluesky #Ryugu #Nitrogen

☄️ Bennu looked 75x richer in nitrogen than Ryugu. That was a measurement artifact.
Kyoto University found Ryugu's nitrogen hiding in salt veins and clay layers — locked in, not floating free.

Ryugu's parent body dried out like a salt flat.

#Ryugu #Bennu #Hayabusa2 #OSIRISREx