Last month, Japan's Hayabusa2 mission brought home a cache of rocks collected from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. While analysis of those returned samples is just getting underway, researchers are using data from the spacecraft's other instruments to reveal new details about the asteroid's past.

In a study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers offer an explanation for why Ryugu isn't quite as rich in water-bearing minerals as some other asteroids. The study suggests that the ancient parent body from which Ryugu was formed had likely dried out in some kind of heating event before Ryugu came into being, which left Ryugu itself drier than expected.

NASA's Lucy mission is one step closer to launch as L'TES, the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer, has been successfully integrated on to the spacecraft.

"Having two of the three instruments integrated onto the spacecraft is an exciting milestone," said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The L'TES team is to be commended for their true dedication and determination."

Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojan asteroids, leftover building blocks of the Solar System's outer planets orbiting the Sun at the distance of Jupiter. The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (called "Lucy" by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanity's evolution. Likewise, the Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the birth of our solar system more than 4 billion years ago.

L'TES, developed by a team at Arizona State University (ASU), is effectively a remote thermometer.

Among the many challenges with a Mars voyage, one of the most pressing is: How can you get enough fuel for the spacecraft to fly back to Earth?

Houlin Xin, an assistant professor in physics & astronomy, may have found a solution.

He and his team have discovered a more efficient way of creating methane-based rocket fuel theoretically on the surface of Mars, which can make the return trip all more feasible.

The novel discovery comes in the form of a single-atom zinc catalyst that will synthesize the current two-step process into a single-step reaction using a more compact and portable device.