By democratising space research, a new partnership with Japanese research organisations aims to accelerate our collective technological and analytical capabilities to get us beyond the Earth and the Moon to analyse, understand and interpret the new frontier of space.
The new collaboration between the universities of Melbourne (UoM) and Tokyo (UTokyo) and the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) aims to accelerate space research and democratise human understanding of Earth’s origin, as well as our own.
The three organisations are working together to ‘flatten’ accessibility in the ever-expanding field of space research, opening it up to a larger and more diverse array of researchers and stakeholders.
Head of Melbourne Analytical Geochemistry Dr Brandon Mahan from the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will lead the collaboration from Melbourne, with Professor Shogo Tachibana from UTokyo, and Professor Tomohiro Usui and Professor Masaki Fujimoto of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA), leading from Japan.
“The collaboration will initially focus on highly specialised techniques used to analyse meteorites and asteroids, like those being developed at Melbourne Analytical Geochemistry," Dr Mahan explains. "And in addition to targeted joint research, the partnership is launching a collaborative PhD Program designed to develop and support future generations of space scientists."
The PhD Program will include analysis training at JAXA’s analytical centre (Space Curation Camp), as well as reciprocal student and researcher exchanges between the two universities and JAXA, including access to laboratory and instrument facilities across the institutions.
“JAXA’s efforts have had several world-leading successes in recent years, including the first sample return missions to successfully bring pristine asteroidal materials to Earth for analysis. The missions were Hyabusa to the asteroid Itokawa and Hyabusa2, to Ryugu.
“Sample return capsules landed safely in Woomera, South Australia, through close coordination between Japanese and Australian authorities and institutions, and analytical characterisation of these two asteroids has led to groundbreaking insights into the formation history of Earth and our Solar System," Dr Mahan says.
Professor Fujimoto says: "Pushing forward from these successes and insights, JAXA is now developing its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to bring back samples from Mars’ moon Phobos."
Dr Mahan explains the direct study of extraterrestrial materials – for example meteorites and projectiles from the surface of other planets and their moons – is conventionally conducted on samples that have made the “harrowing journey” to Earth’s surface, experiencing intense heating while travelling through Earth’s atmosphere.
In addition, some of these meteorite finds may have spent an unknown amount of time on Earth’s surface before being discovered, collected, and analysed.
This time at Earth’s surface can change the composition of the meteorites through interactions with Earth’s atmosphere and water (oxidation, basically rusting), and through these chemical reactions their original chemical makeup may be altered.
“While still intensely valuable, such samples carry with them assumptions and caveats as to how “pristine” these samples are: it can be difficult to truly know if and to what extent their composition has been altered by their trajectory to Earth and exposure to Earth’s atmosphere and surface processes – for example, interaction with Earth water,” Dr Mahan says.
Professor Usui says: "By going out and collecting samples in outer space and returning them to Earth – all with extreme care to maintain their pristine state – their unaltered composition can then be studied with much more confidence and fewer assumptions."
Initial and ongoing analyses of samples from Itokawa and Ryugu (as well as asteroid Bennu via NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission) have shown that these are the most pristine extraterrestrial materials available on Earth for study.
“The unadulterated, pristine nature of these return samples—and therefore also the return missions that bring them safely back to Earth—makes this facet of space research invaluable to our understanding of Earth’s origin as well as our own,” Professor Tachibana says.
First published on 17 December 2024.
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