[ti:Japan Pleased with Latest Asteroid Samples] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Japanese officials say they are pleased with the quality [00:04.84]of asteroid material collected by a spacecraft and returned to Earth. [00:12.84]Last week, officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, [00:19.00]JAXA, described the samples, which were collected [00:23.80]from the Ryugu asteroid in July 2019. [00:29.44]Ryugu sits more than 300 million kilometers from Earth. [00:36.28]Japan's unpiloted Hayabusa2 spacecraft [00:41.12]removed the material after blasting a hole into the asteroid. [00:48.00]The space agency said the July 2019 mission [00:52.72]aimed to collect samples from below the surface of Ryugu. [00:59.12]During an earlier operation in February 2019, [01:03.68]Hayabusa2 collected material from a different part of the asteroid. [01:10.56]The second collection effort resulted in sample pieces [01:15.52]as big as 1 centimeter, JAXA officials said. [01:21.68]The black material looked similar to charcoal and was very hard, they added. [01:29.04]It did not break apart when picked up or poured into another container. [01:36.16]Earlier this month, space officials described the samples [01:40.96]Hayabusa2 removed on its first mission as smaller, sandy pieces. [01:48.32]They were collected from the surface of Ryugu. [01:53.52]Hayabusa2 was launched in December 2014 [01:58.28]and arrived near Ryugu in June 2018. [02:03.84]The Japanese space mission aims to use the samples [02:08.52]to learn more about how our solar system formed. [02:14.32]JAXA's Tomohiro Usui is a space materials scientist. [02:21.68]He told The Associated Press that to get the second set of samples in July, [02:28.44]Hayabusa2 used an impactor to blast below the asteroid's surface. [02:36.88]The aim was to collect material unaffected [02:41.04]by space radiation or other environmental conditions. [02:47.00]Usui noted that the size differences [02:50.64]suggest different hardness of the bedrock of the asteroid. [02:56.96]"One possibility is that the place of the second touchdown was a hard bedrock [03:03.84]and larger particles broke and entered the compartment," Usui said. [03:11.04]JAXA is continuing its examinations of the asteroid samples [03:16.84]ahead of fuller studies next year. [03:21.36]Following studies in Japan, some of the samples [03:25.52]will be shared with the U.S. space agency NASA [03:29.32]and other international space agencies for additional research. [03:35.80]Asteroids orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets. [03:41.72]They are among the oldest objects in the solar system, [03:46.40]and may help scientists better understand how Earth developed over time. [03:54.00]The asteroid samples can give researchers a rare chance [03:58.80]to study these mysterious rocky objects. [04:04.32]Hayabusa2 is now on another mission to a smaller asteroid, [04:10.16]called 1998KY26. [04:15.76]JAXA expects the aircraft to take 11 years to reach that asteroid. [04:23.44]Hayabusa2's new mission aims to study possible ways [04:28.40]to prevent large meteorites from hitting Earth. [04:33.68]The only other nation to successfully collect an asteroid sample [04:38.84]is the United States. [04:42.04]NASA announced last month that its Osiris-Rex spacecraft [04:47.84]had completed the sample operation on the asteroid Bennu. [04:53.96]NASA said it was pleased the spacecraft [04:57.68]collected more sample material than expected. [05:02.28]I'm Bryan Lynn. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM