Asteroids Content

Hayabusa-2 Sample Return Mission Suggests Protracted Wetter Asteroids

Andy Fell — September 16, 2025 - 4:36pm

New results from the Hayabusa-2 space probe show that asteroids formed at the very beginnings of our Solar System retained substantial amounts of water for hundreds of millions of years, potentially delivering water to Earth and other planets for much longer than previously thought. The work by a large international team, including Professor Qing-Zhu Yin at the ɫ��ɫ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was published Sept. 10 in Nature.

Dwarf Planet Vesta a Window to the Early Solar System

Andy Fell — October 06, 2021 - 4:30pm

The dwarf planet Vesta is helping scientists better understand the earliest era in the formation of our solar system. Two recent papers involving scientists from the ɫ��ɫ, use data from meteorites derived from Vesta to resolve the “missing mantle problem” and push back our knowledge of the solar system to just a couple of million years after it began to form. The papers were published in Nature Communications Sept. 14 and Nature Astronomy Sept. 30.