Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center

The key feature of JAXA's ESCuC curation facility is the ability to observe, take out a portion and preserve a precious returned sample, without being exposed to the terrestrial atmosphere and other contaminants.

[3] Due to the nature of the Hayabusa returned samples, the facility developed the capability to handle particles as small as 10 μm by using a system based on electrostatic micromanipulation within a clean chamber in contact with either vacuum or an inert gas (usually nitrogen).

[3] The facility also features a wide variety of laboratories and analyzers, including XCT/XRD, TEM/STEM, EPMA, SIMS, FTIR, Raman, NAA, noble-gas-MS, and ToF-SIMS.

[3] The "Monitoring and Meeting Room" has recently been retrofitted to host the samples returned by the Hayabusa2 mission from the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu.

There are currently no pristine returned samples curatorial facility in Europe, even though preparatory studies have been conducted in the recent past.