Saturday, January 9, 2021 - 7:41 am
CANTON A Canton woman s name flew all the way to the Ryugu asteroid and back and it s not the first time her name has been in space, although she had never left the planet.
Clarkson Research Professor Dana Barry s name aboard Japan’s Hayabusa -2 unmanned spacecraft that recently returned to Earth with samples from the asteroid Ryugu.
The spacecraft was launched in 2014 and arrived at Ryugu in 2018 where it collected several samples. Scientists hope the precious samples, which are expected to amount to no more than 0.1 grams of material, will teach us about the origin and evolution of our solar system and help efforts to defend Earth from potential asteroid impacts.