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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

15/12/22 10:55 AM IST

Near-Earth Asteroid Ryugu

In News
  • A sample of a space rock called Ryugu that returned to Earth almost two years ago may hold the answers to the origin of the planet.
Asteriod Ryugu
  • Asteriod Ryugu is a diamond-shaped space rock. The asteroid's name means "dragon palace" in Japanese and refers to a magical underwater castle in a Japanese folktale.
  • Ryugu was discovered in 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project, a collaborative, U.S.-based project to catalogue and track space rocks.
  • The asteroid is about 2,952 feet (900 meters) in diameter.
  • Ryugu is orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars and occasionally crosses Earth's orbit, which means the space rock is classified as "potentially hazardous," though the body poses no imminent danger to our world.
Significance
  • These samples could help evaluate the role of Ryugu-like objects in depositing volatile elements to terrestrial planets.
  • Volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are thought to have played a key role in forging complex organic molecules — ingredients essential to build habitable worlds like Earth.
  • It can also help to evaluate whether Ryugu-type materials also contributed to the origin of Mars.
Asteroids
  • Asteroids are also known as minor planets.
  • They are rocky remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
  • Most asteroids are irregularly shaped, though a few are nearly spherical.
  • Many asteroids are known to have a small companion moon (some have two moons).
  • There are also binary (double) asteroids, in which two rocky bodies of roughly equal size orbit each other, as well as triple asteroid systems.
Source- DTE

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