Researchers studied tiny asteroid fragments from Ryugu, revealing that it originated in the outer solar system and evolved ...

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

Imperial College London scientists say microbes on asteroid samples from Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission have down to Earth ...

The salt crystals, consisting of rock salt, sodium carbonate, and sodium sulfate, are crucial for understanding the evolution ...

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life can survive the transfer between planetary bodies as a secondary path for life to get ...

Bad news, folks: those samples from the asteroid Ryugu appear to have been contaminated by life here on Earth.

Ryugu, formally known as 162173 Ryugu, is a 2850-foot (870-meter) wide near-Earth asteroid that lacks a protective atmosphere. This means its surface is directly exposed to space and can gather ...

Microscope image of one of the small fragments of asteroid 162173 Ryugu studied by scientists at the Advanced Photon Source. This fragment is roughly 400 microns in diameter, or about the width of ...

In June 2018, Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission reached asteroid 162173 Ryugu. It studied the asteroid for about 15 months, deploying small rovers and a lander, before gathering a sample and returning it ...

Snapping a series of pictures that revealed the asteroid’s shape. The asteroid of choice was 162173 Ryugu, or Ryugu for short. In Japanese it refers to a magical, underwater Dragon Palace.

Scientists have found microorganisms crawling over a sample retrieved from the 200 million-mile-distant asteroid Ryugu. But ...