Asteroid Ryugu is more than just a distant rock in space-it is a window into our solar system's history and a guide for the future of exploration. As scientists continue to analyze its secrets ...

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

For the study, the researchers identified the mineral djerfisherite, which contains potassium, iron, and nickel, and surprised the researchers with its appearance as the presence of djerfisherite ...

A surprising discovery from a tiny grain of asteroid Ryugu has rocked scientists' understanding of how our Solar System evolved. Researchers found djerfisherite—a mineral typically born in ...

Miyahara and colleagues spotted Ryugu’s djerfisherite while using field-emission transmission electron microscopy (FE-TEM) to better understand how terrestrial weathering affected the asteroid ...

The pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa2 mission on December 6, 2020, have been vital to improving the understanding of primitive asteroids and the formation of the solar ...

In June, Hayabusa2, the Japanese probe, crept up on an asteroid called Ryugu. It surveyed the object’s surface, and in the following months landed multiple robotic probes on its rocky terrain.

Astronomy Solar System Asteroids 'Like finding a tropical seed in Arctic ice': How a surprise mineral could change the history of asteroid Ryugu News By Keith Cooper published July 1, 2025 ...

Sodium carbonates on Ryugu as evidence of highly saline water in the outer Solar System. Nature Astronomy, 2024; 8 (12): 1536 DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02418-1 ...

According to Miyahara, the discovery “challenges the notion that Ryugu is compositionally uniform” and opens new questions about primitive asteroid evolution.