Liquid Water Flowed On Ryugu More Than One Billion Years After It Formed

The asteroid Ryugu as imaged by JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft. Examination of Ryugu samples has revealed that water flowed through the asteroid more than one billion years after formation. This is in sharp contrast to earlier thinking that water activity on asteroids ceased much earlier than that. Image Credit: 2025 JAXA, UTokyo & collaborators CC-BY-ND

Researchers working with a sample from asteroid Ryugu discovered that water flowed on the asteroid almost one billion years after it formed. The finding suggests that carbon-rich asteroids could've delivered far more water to Earth than thought.

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