Hayabusa2: Asteroid mission exploring a 'rubble pile'

[nitpicker]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47633649

Hayabusa2: Asteroid mission exploring a 'rubble pile'

By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

19 March 2019

The asteroid being explored by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 is a "rubble pile" formed when rocks were blasted off a bigger asteroid and came back together again.

The discovery means that asteroid Ryugu has a parent body out there somewhere, and scientists already have two candidates.

They have also found a chemical signature across the asteroid that can indicate the presence of water, but this needs confirmation.

Ryugu's unusual shape is also a sign that it must have been spinning much faster in the past.

Scientists from the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) mission and from Nasa's Osiris-Rex spacecraft, which is exploring a different asteroid called Bennu, have been presenting their latest findings at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.

Meanwhile, the team behind the Osiris-Rex mission have made the first close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from an asteroid's surface. Their findings are published in a suite of papers published in Nature's journals.

[Princess Turandot]

1. Here is Bennu spouting off:

https://www.asteroidmission.org/?attachment_id=15595#main


(NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin)