The asteroid's birth place has been revealed in a new analysis of the mineral samples.

The solar system's outer reaches are where comets usually form.

A large team of researchers headed by a team from Hokkaido University in Japan looked closely at the minerals that make up the area.

They looked at the levels of Oxygen 16.

Isotopes in ryugu
Minerals found in Ryugu samples. (Kawasaki et al., Science Advances, 2022)

Hokkaido University planetary scientist Noriyuki Kawasaki and colleagues write in their published paper that oxygen isotopic compositions of primary minerals can provide important constraints on their origin.

There is a significant amount of ice in comets because they form further away from the Sun than asteroids. asteroids are mostly made of rock.

The presence of carbonate minerals in the dust samples suggests that the asteroid formed in a place where ice doesn't easily melt.

The team was able to identify minerals like spinel and olivine at higher temperatures.

The idea is that some material from the inner Solar System traveled away from the Sun and ended up colliding with the other.

The carbonaceous meteorite Ivuna, which was discovered many years ago in Tanzania, was found to have copper and zinc in it's makeup. The composition of the 81p/Wild 2 comet is similar to the one found in the outer Solar System.

Scientists use this detective work to chart the geological history of the universe. The asteroid has clues about the earliest years of the solar system.

Scientists have been using meteorites like Ivuna to make educated guesses about the asteroids and comets that fell to Earth. We've got samples that were plucked from the air.

Particles from other stars exploded before the Sun formed, and scientists have proof of that. The material collected from the asteroid is going to tell us a lot more in the future.

The accretion region of the Ivuna-type parent bodies is different from those for other carbonaceous chondrite groups.

The research was published in a journal.