Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2020 December 14

                     Capsule Returns from Asteroid Ryugu
                        Video Credit: JAXA, Hayabusa2

   Explanation: The streak across the sky is a capsule returning from an
   asteroid. It returned earlier this month from the near-Earth asteroid
   162173 Ryugu carrying small rocks and dust from its surface. The
   canister was released by its mothership, Japan's Hayabusa2, a mission
   that visited Ryugu in 2018, harvested a surface sample in 2019, and
   zoomed back past Earth. The jettisoned return capsule deployed a
   parachute and landed in rural Australia. A similar mission, NASA's
   OSIRIS- REx, recently captured rocks and dust from a similar asteroid,
   Bennu, and is scheduled to return its surface sample to Earth in 2023.
   Analyses of compounds from these asteroids holds promise to give
   humanity new insights about the early Solar System and new clues about
   how water and organic matter came to be on Earth.

   Experts Debate: How will humanity first discover extraterrestrial life?
                  Tomorrow's picture: Jupiter meets Saturn
     __________________________________________________________________

       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
                NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

--- hpt/lnx 1.9.0