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.

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

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

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

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

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

Researchers were surprised to find live microbes in a rock collected from space. The sample was retrieved on the Japanese ...

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 ...

One such object is asteroid (162173) Ryugu, a 1 km-wide near-Earth asteroid believed to have originated in the asteroid belt. However, it has since moved to cross Earth's orbit, located 300 ...