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The Japanese Hayabusa2 mission (JAXA) has brought back samples from the carbonaceous primitive asteroid Ryugu. Thanks to the analyses of these samples by an international group led by Prof. Tomoki Nakamura (Tohoku Univ., Japan), it is possible to propose a scenario retracing the history of Ryugu, including its formation after the fragmentation of its parent asteroid.
Hubert Bretonnière, Cosmology team, defended his thesis entitled "Galaxy morphology for Euclid: Simulations, forecasts and detection with deep learning", carried out under the supervision of Hervé Dole, Marc Huertas-Company, and Alexandre Boucaud. He is now a new doctor of Université Paris Saclay and is leaving for the University of Santa Cruz (USA). Congratulations to him!
Using the orbital imaging spectroscopy instruments OMEGA (Mars Express) and CRISM (MRO), the Solar System team has released the first global and high resolution map of hydrated minerals on Mars. These minerals hold the distinction of having been formed through interaction between the ancient Martian crust and liquid water, while many of them still contain some amount of water trapped within their structure. Such hydrated minerals are excellent tracers of past water-bearing environments and are a primary target of exobiology missions to Mars.
An international research team has just revealed the first images of the Orion Nebula, the richest and closest star nursery in the Solar System, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. They once again demonstrate the exceptional performance of this instrument.
The most detailed and complete images ever taken of a Photo-Dissociation Region (PDR) in the closest site of massive star formation, the Orion Molecular Cloud, have been obtained with the Keck telescope and portends what JWST should soon accomplish. These observations are critical for understanding the interaction of young massive stars with the gas and dust cloud in which they are born and where Sun-like stars form.
