Premium
Hayabusa‐returned sample curation in the Planetary Material Sample Curation Facility of JAXA
Author(s) -
YADA Toru,
FUJIMURA Akio,
ABE Masanao,
NAKAMURA Tomoki,
NOGUCHI Takaaki,
OKAZAKI Ryuji,
NAGAO Keisuke,
ISHIBASHI Yukihiro,
SHIRAI Kei,
ZOLENSKY Michael E.,
SANDFORD Scott,
OKADA Tatsuaki,
UESUGI Masayuki,
KAROUJI Yuzuru,
OGAWA Maho,
YAKAME Shogo,
UENO Munetaka,
MUKAI Toshifumi,
YOSHIKAWA Makoto,
KAWAGUCHI Junichiro
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
meteoritics and planetary science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.09
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1945-5100
pISSN - 1086-9379
DOI - 10.1111/maps.12027
Subject(s) - asteroid , spacecraft , astrobiology , sample (material) , comet , environmental science , aerospace engineering , engineering , aeronautics , physics , thermodynamics
– The Planetary Material Sample Curation Facility of JAXA (PMSCF/JAXA) was established in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan, to curate planetary material samples returned from space in conditions of minimum terrestrial contaminants. The performances for the curation of Hayabusa‐returned samples had been checked with a series of comprehensive tests and rehearsals. After the Hayabusa spacecraft had accomplished a round‐trip flight to asteroid 25143 Itokawa and returned its reentry capsule to the Earth in June 2010, the reentry capsule was brought back to the PMSCF/JAXA and was put to a series of processes to extract recovered samples from Itokawa. The particles recovered from the sample catcher were analyzed by electron microscope, given their ID, grouped into four categories, and preserved in dimples on quartz slide glasses. Some fraction of them has been distributed for initial analyses at NASA, and will be distributed for international announcement of opportunity (AO), but a certain fraction of them will be preserved in vacuum for future analyses.