Just added: Workshop on Bennu and Ryugu: Samples from the Early Solar System
The Workshop on Bennu and Ryugu: Samples from the Early Solar System is scheduled for October 7–9, 2025, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas.
Indication of Interest
To be added to the mailing list to receive additional information about this workshop submit an indication of interest.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meeting_portal/iofi/?mtg=bennuryugu2025
This is an ENComPSS training session- Expanding NASA’s Community of Planetary Sample Scientists. Needless to say, the Hayabusa/Haya2/OSIRIS-REx programs include and define planetary sample science. As chondrites (non-differentiated, not even melted bodies), Itokawa, Ryugu, and Bennu anchor the early end of the planetary timeline. By comparison, large bodies have been melted, which boiled off their interesting volatiles, from water to sulfur and on to potassium, zinc, etc. Meanwhile, differentiation caused the non-volatiles iron, platinum, gold, cobalt, etc. to sink to a newly-formed core, where they’re now largely inaccessible (except as iron asteroids/meteorites). We can’t get a picture of the early Solar System, and the history of planets, without this starting composition. Even the Sun makes a poor compositional reference, even though solar material is >99 percent of the entire Solar System’s mass. We are quite challenged to measure that Solar composition, because of the mechanical difficulties. Measuring the photosphere composition via spectroscopy is indirect, and errors have been found. Meanwhile, measuring the solar wind has known effects, due to the various little biases in plasma physics favoring some species versus other species. By contrast, Haya2 grains are being held up as the “Ryugu Reference Project“- a mineralogical sample, of known provenance and context, similar to the CI meteorites but never exposed to the Earth’s air, moisture, biota, entry heating and impact shock, etc.