We have talked a lot about Bennu lately, but OSIRIS-REx wasn’t the first mission to smack an asteroid in the hopes of getting a sample. Back in April of 2019, Hayabusa2 sent a projectile at the surface of asteroid Ryugu, creating an impact crater. The impactor was about 13cm and left a crater about 14.5m in diameter.

This week, the mission team presented an analysis of the physical results of the impact at the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. More than 200 boulders were either new to the images or moved from elsewhere, and they ranged in size from 30cm to 6m. The shaking from the impact actually displaced material as far away as 40m from the center of the crater.

The sample collected from the impact is on its way back to Earth as we speak, but the analysis of the displacement is useful for understanding how small body collisions work and how resurfacing works under low gravity conditions. The data may even assist in the upcoming DART mission we talked about last week. Everything is tied together, y’all.

More Information

Kobe University press release 

“An Artificial Impact on the Asteroid (162173) Ryugu Formed a Crater in the Gravity-Dominated Regime,” M. Arakawa et al., 2020 April 3, Science

“Seismic Waves Induced by High-Velocity Impacts: Implications for Seismic Shaking Surrounding Impact Craters on Asteroids,” K. Matsue et al., 2020 March 1, Icarus