Ryugu / Science
Science · Ryugu
These are six research papers, all free to read on arXiv, about Ryugu. We summarize each one in plain English from its abstract.
Our own artist's impression. No figures are taken from the papers.
Every number links to the paper it comes from.
How big Ryugu is, what shape it has and how it spins.
What they foundRyugu's boulders imply a macroporosity of about 14%, so its rocks average only about 1.38 g/cm³.
Packing theory applied to Ryugu's measured boulder sizes.
Source for: Macroporosity
What they foundRyugu's smooth western bulge could have formed when it spun faster than about 3.75 hours per turn and part of it deformed.
Finite-element modelling on the mission's shape model.
What Ryugu is made of and how its surface behaves.
What they foundA catalogue of 77 craters over 20 m across shows more craters at low latitudes and fewer in the western bulge.
Hayabusa2 ONC images up to February 2019.
Source for: Craters over 20 m
Where Ryugu came from and how it formed and changed over time.
What they foundRyugu samples contain presolar stardust: silicate, oxide, silicon carbide and carbon grains older than the Sun.
NanoSIMS isotope mapping of samples returned by Hayabusa2.
What they foundRyugu and CI-type meteorites share the same nickel isotope signature, distinct from other carbon-rich meteorites.
Nickel isotope measurements of returned samples.
What they foundSome organic matter in Ryugu contains nitrogen-bearing groups and formed in the cold outer solar nebula.
Electron-microscope spectroscopy of pristine samples at the nanoscale.
New papers on Ryugu, checked weekly, summarized after a person reads it.
No new papers on Ryugu this week. We check arXiv every week.
We search arXiv for Ryugu papers and keep the ones that add something new, are clearly written up and are relevant to a general reader. A person reads every abstract.
Summaries are written by us from each paper’s abstract, not copied. Diagrams are our own simplified drawings, not figures from the papers.
“Peer-reviewed” means arXiv lists a journal reference for the paper. Everything else is marked “Preprint”: shared openly, possibly before or without journal review.
Paper metadata courtesy of arXiv. Summaries written by us; read the original papers via the links. Paper metadata from arXiv.org, which does not endorse this site.