The Hayabusa space probe, which took off from Kagoshima in 2003 and parachuted into the Australian outback on June 13 this year, may be carrying asteroid dust. If so, the dust came from an asteroid that is a lazy 300,000,000 kilometres from Earth, and it could provide clues about the origins of our solar system.
Another probe, Kaguya, is giving us clues about the origins of our moon. Kaguya went into lunar orbit in 2007. It has found signatures of a mineral called oviline, which is meant to indicate a deep layer of iron. The Apollo mission samples couldn't give us this because they were from the shallow crust.
The implication is that the moon was hot for a while after it was ripped from Earth in a planetary collision about 4.5 billion years ago (according to a leading theory). Even after the outer crust was formed, liquid rock was churning underneath, bringing oviline to just below the surface.
Hard to imagine a fiery volcanic moon in our skies now isn't it?
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