A photo from open sources
Having analyzed the frames produced by the German satellite MASCOT lander, scientists have noticed that the surface of the asteroid Ryugu does not contain dust.
It is believed that the asteroid Ryugu was formed as a result of the collapse a larger body about 700 million years ago. On him there is no atmosphere that could protect against dust passing through Solar system. In fact, these are microscopic “rockets”, bombarding the surface of an asteroid and breaking it into fragments dust. Exactly the same dust was found on the moon and the asteroid West.
In the fall of 2018, a German probe took surface photos High-resolution Ryugu on which no fine particles. Permission for photographing was set to 100 micrometers, which is close to a sheet of paper in thickness.
A photo from open sources
Planetologist Ralph Jaumann says that after a few dozen million years on the surface must necessarily appear dust, but if it’s not there, then some physical or geological processes that rid the cosmic body of dust.
According to Jaumann, Ryugu asteroid can hide dust in porous rocks or deep inside the cosmic body. When is the asteroid shakes from a meteorite strike, particles fall through small cracks to the center of the asteroid.
There is another version of events: dust is sprayed into space together with volatile gases that occur when heated sunlight pieces of ice.
According to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe, asteroid Bennu erupts in outer space flows of small rocks. However jaumann believes that this option is not suitable for Ryugu. Last asteroid studies have shown that it has less mineral components than Bennu.
University of Arizona Researchers Have Another Explanation dust flows Bennu. Perhaps very frequent temperature changes on the surface of the asteroid, large stones are forced to break, releasing dust particles into space, like a broken cracker.
Researchers believe something like this is happening on Ryugu, just the Hayabusa2 probe is not in the position to make out this phenomenon. However, fragments of stones can create significantly more dust. Perhaps the answer to this riddle we can find out as soon as Hayabusa2 sends samples to Earth in 2020 soil taken from the bowels of Ryugu.
Andrey Vetrov
Stones
