Study links Kopargaon meteorite to historic Japanese mission

Time of India

07-05-2025

Pune: A meteorite that crashed through the roof of Kiran Babanrao Thakre's house at Kopargaon village in Ahilyanagar district of Maharashtra has astonished scientists by revealing a direct link to Itokawa — the asteroid that Japan's Hayabusa mission famously sampled and brought back to Earth.This Kopargaon meteorite wasn't just any space rock. Tests conducted at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), under the Union govt's department of space, in Ahmedabad showed that it shared striking similarities with samples collected from asteroid Itokawa by Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft — the first mission to ever return with samples from an asteroid to Earth."The space rock, which left a two-inch crater in Thakre's bedroom floor and shattered into pieces weighing less than 1kg, contained similar rare mineral composition as samples retrieved by the Japanese spacecraft in 2010," said Dwijesh Ray, the PRL scientist involved in the study.Hayabusa in 2010 accomplished what was once thought impossible. It collected dust from an asteroid and returned to Earth."We've only been able to visit a handful of asteroids with spacecraft, so having a piece of one land in someone's house gives us an opportunity to study these ancient objects without the expense of another space mission. This unexpected link between a village in Maharashtra and Japan's famous space programme offers fresh insights into our solar system's turbulent past, revealing new details about the cosmic processes that shaped Earth and neighbouring planets billions of years ago," Ray said.He said meteorites that could be traced back to their exact asteroid source were incredibly rare. "We know meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but usually, we can't tell exactly which asteroid they came from. This match with Itokawa is crucial because it allows us to connect what we see in space with what lands on Earth," Ray said.Meteorites like the Kopargaon specimen are known as chondrites — ancient rocks that formed over 4.5 billion years ago and contain clues about the solar system's earliest days. "They may even have delivered water and the raw ingredients for life to early Earth. By linking meteorites to their parent asteroids, we can better predict how asteroid surfaces evolve, which helps in planning future space missions, resource exploration and even planetary defence," he said."Space agencies worldwide are now sending missions to collect samples from different types of asteroids. These missions help identify which meteorites come from which asteroids, study valuable minerals that might be mined in the future and learn how space conditions affect asteroid surfaces. Understanding asteroids better also helps scientists develop plans to protect Earth from potential impacts," Ray added.