Itokawa Dust Particles: A Direct Link Between S-Type Asteroids and Ordinary Chondrites
Abstract
The Hayabusa spacecraft successfully recovered dust particles from the surface of near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa. Synchrotron-radiation x-ray diffraction and transmission and scanning electron microscope analyses indicate that the mineralogy and mineral chemistry of the Itokawa dust particles are identical to those of thermally metamorphosed LL chondrites, consistent with spectroscopic observations made from Earth and by the Hayabusa spacecraft. Our results directly demonstrate that ordinary chondrites, the most abundant meteorites found on Earth, come from S-type asteroids. Mineral chemistry indicates that the majority of regolith surface particles suffered long-term thermal annealing and subsequent impact shock, suggesting that Itokawa is an asteroid made of reassembled pieces of the interior portions of a once larger asteroid.
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Published In
Science
Volume 333 | Issue 6046
26 August 2011
26 August 2011
Copyright
Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 2 May 2011
Accepted: 2 August 2011
Published in print: 26 August 2011
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: We thank the Hayabusa project team for sample return; KEK for synchrotron experiments; H. Nakano, Y. Yamazaki, K. Shimada, Y. Kakazu, T. Hashimoto, M. Konno, Y. Katsuya, and Y. Matsushita, for technical support; and J. Grossman, T. Ikeda, T. Hokada, K. Ozawa, Y. Nakamuta, and S. Wakita for helpful discussions. Supported by NASA grant 769583.07.03 (M.E.Z. and S.A.S.).
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