Samples from the Ryugu asteroid studied in Grenoble

Launched in 2014 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Hayabusa2 successfully returned samples from the Ryugu asteroid to Earth in 2020. Researchers from the Grenoble Institute of Planetary science and Astrophysics (IPAG) – a research center jointly supported by the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA) and French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) – were involved in the first investigations of these extraterrestrial samples with the initial results published in a special issue of Science this year.