The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 returned to Earth in December 2020 bearing soil samples collected from a nearby asteroid, 162173 Ryugu. Those samples were divided between six scientific teams ...

See multiple views from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft's touching down on asteroid 162173 Ryugu. Credit: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi ...

Asteroid 162173 Ryugu is a diamond-shaped space rock visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2, which took a sample from the asteroid's surface to return to Earth.

The successor to this mission, called Hayabusa2, was completed near the end of 2020, bringing back material from Asteroid 162173 "Ryugu," along with a collection of images and data gathered ...

Asteroid 162173 Ryugu (Image credit: ISAS/JAXA, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons) The pitch-dark asteroid bits reflect only about 2% to 3% of the light that hits them, the team found.

The nearly-kilometer-long 162173 Ryugu asteroid had a sample brought back by JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission, and the findings can reveal new insights on the birth of the solar system.

Researchers from Imperial College London have discovered that a space-returned sample from asteroid Ryugu was rapidly colonized by terrestrial microorganisms, even under stringent contamination ...

Samples taken from the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu continue to provide scientists with important insights, this time about the potential beginnings of life on our planet.

In 2020 the space mission Hayabusa2 returned samples and images from the space rock Asteroid 162173 or Ryugu, classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) by NASA 's Center for Near-Earth ...

This time last year, scientists got their hands on some very rare space rocks — specifically, 5.4 grams of material from the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu, which was returned to Earth via the ...