Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center

Overview

The conceptual studies for JAXA's curation facility begun in 2005, the specifications were decided in 2007, and the facility was completed in 2008 in time to receive the asteroid samples retrieved by the Hayabusa mission. The facility is composed of several cleanrooms rated from ISO7 (for gowning and cleaning rooms) to the cleanest ISO5 (for sample handling and storage). 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. 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).

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.

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