Ryugu at night – a ‘cauliflower rock’ with bright minerals
Ryugu at night – a ‘cauliflower rock’ with bright minerals
The MASCam team identified two types of rock in the images acquired during MASCOT’s MASCOT and landing. Some were slightly brighter (but also only reflected five percent of the incident sunlight); these were ‘Type 2’ boulders with sharp edges and smooth, fractured surfaces. Others were darker, reflecting only four percent of the incident solar irradiation; these were more irregularly shaped ‘Type 1’ boulders with cauliflower-like, crumpled surfaces. The latter were imaged during the first night at Ryugu, directly in front of the MASCam lens, and they were illuminated with the built-in light-emitting diodes. A combination of blue, green and red light was used to create this colour image. The researchers were surprised by brightly reflecting minerals reminiscent of calcium- and aluminium-rich splinters of a rare class of meteorites, the ‘CI-Chondrites’, which fell to Earth at Tagish Lake in Canada in 2000. They are among the oldest and most original witnesses of the formation of the Solar System found in meteorite collections on Earth. On the upper right, the enlarged section of the rock spur on the lower right in the large image, which was about 25 centimetres in front of MASCam.
