The impact experiment conducted on the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission which took place two years ago resulted in an unexpectedly large crater. With the use of simulations, a team led by the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS has recently succeeded in gaining new insights from the experiment regarding the formation and development of asteroids. These insights are also important for the DART mission of NASA.
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was developed in order to study the history of the asteroid Ryugu, and collected samples and returned them to earth for laboratory analysis. The project participants are Dr. Martin Jutzi and Dr. Sabina Raducan, both from the Physical Institute of the University of Bern, Department for Space Research and Planetology (WP), and are members of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS. Under their leadership, in a study which has recently been published in Nature Communications, the team has presented new findings on the formation and development of asteroids.