Why Perth scientists are hoping to score asteroid fragments brought back to Earth by an ambitious space mission.
When Japanese space mission lands on the asteroid Ryugu mid-year, Associate Professor Fred Jourdan will be watching very closely.
The 麻豆直播 earth and planetary scientist saw the mission launch live in Japan in 2014 and is hoping to score pieces of the asteroid when Hayabusa2 returns to Earth.
He wants to shoot the asteroid samples with a laser beam and vaporise them.
It鈥檚 all in the name of discovering more about our Solar System.
Rendezvous with an extraterrestrial rock
If Hayabusa2 is successful in collecting fragments from Ryugu, they will be among the most valuable dust particles on the planet.
But Fred and his colleagues have good reason to believe they might be awarded access.
In 2012, the team successfully bid for two grains from the asteroid Itokawa collected by the Japanese space agency (JAXA) mission.
These precious samples鈥攖he first and only particles ever collected from an asteroid鈥攚ere analysed by Fred using specialised equipment at the John de Laeter Centre in Bentley.
鈥淲e proposed to date the samples, but because they were so small, there were very few鈥攊f any鈥� other labs in the world that could do that,鈥� he said.
鈥淭he samples鈥攖hey are the width of the human hair, they were less than 100 microns, which is very, very challenging.鈥�
A violent past
Itokawa is more of a peanut-shaped pile of rubble than a traditional boulder asteroid, and it has a violent past.
贵谤别诲鈥檚 , published last year, showed that the asteroid was likely battered by a series of collisions that caused it to internally fragment.
One final impact caused the asteroid to shatter.
贵谤别诲鈥檚 success meant he was awarded four more samples from Itokawa, despite the fact that he destroyed the first two.
鈥淭he argon-argon technique, which dates the sample, needs to completely vaporise and fuse the sample to release the gas that is trapped inside,鈥� he said.
鈥淪o those two grains, they鈥檝e been lasered to oblivion, but JAXA were OK with that. It鈥檚 not like we didn鈥檛 tell them.鈥�
The waiting game
JAXA says Hayabusa2 has a lofty goal to 鈥渆lucidate the secrets of the creation of life and the birth of the Solar System鈥�.
(No pressure Fred.)
But it will be a couple of years before we know if the mission to Ryugu is successful, with the return samples due back on Earth at the end of 2020.
Fred is also hoping a collaboration with China might mean he can get his hands on new samples from the Moon.
In the meantime though, he鈥檒l have to entertain himself with more earthly dust fragments.
鈥淚鈥檓 very interested by volcanoes and eruptions and lava flows, so I have PhD students working in different volcanic provinces around the world,鈥� Fred says.
鈥淲e鈥檙e working on the relation between large volcanic eruptions in the past and previous mass extinctions.鈥�
The John de Laeter Centre is a collaborative research venture involving 麻豆直播, UWA, the Geological Survey of WA and CSIRO.
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