Notices by Elizabeth Tasker (elizabethtasker@mastodon.online)

Power has gone out in the holiday cottage.

Panic erupted.

Source was tracked down to the microwave.

Panic subsided.

Then it was discovered that it’s the same circuit as the plugs for the tea kettle.

There is no coming back from this.

These vocabulary examples took a dark turn 😳

The cherries of Science Tokyo (the university formally known as TiTech) in the sun today! And a few rain drenched roads lined with brave cherries from yesterday 🌸☔️

Our tennis courts are ready for the cherry blossom! 🌸 The centre of each large flower seems to depict another image, but I cannot determine what 🧐 The third flower might show karaoke? Are we doing that more in spring? 🤷

When things are vomitsome busy, I take unusual satisfaction in mundane tasks, as if completing these is proof of total control.

So today, I arrived showered and peachy-fresh to my 8am meeting. And y’all would have appreciated that… if the meeting hadn’t been online. BUT I’M STILL SUPER PROUD.

A new edition of JAXA's #ISASNews newsletter has come out, sharing stories from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.

We put together short summaries in English! 🛰️ The first story is on results from the analysis of asteroid #Ryugu, brought home by the #Hayabusa2 mission.

And if these are tantalisingly epic, you can wrestle down the full stories (in Japanese) here: https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/outreach/isas_news/

This morning, I was sent a survey by my Japanese language school that perhaps reflects the country too well in the ability to protest too little work, but not too much 😂

Saturday (2/22) was “Cat Day” in Japan, so named because the number 2 sounds like the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat’s meow, “nyan”. One of the local convienience stores sold cat-themed treats and extras in celebration! 🐱

A new ball mural at tennis 🎾 for Valentine’s Day! In Japan, women traditionally give men gifts (usually chocolate) on February 14, while men reciprocate on “white day”, a month later.

#JAXA ISAS publishes a really nice newsletter each month, with updates on current and planned missions, future ideas, and interviews. It's only in Japanese, so I asked if we could publish little English summaries. Here's our first month!

(Full newsletter: https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/outreach/isas_news/2025/)

Catch a falling telescope and put it in your pocket... 🎶 The JAXA/NASA Suzaku X-ray space telescope, which completed science operations in 2015, has now re-entered the atmosphere and I think must have burned up. Suzaku is succeeded by XRISM, which carries the spectrometer for exploring diffuse X-ray sources that couldn't be used on Suzaku as the liquid helium leaked!

https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/topics/003916.html

When bacteria was found on an asteroid Ryugu grain in a laboratory in London, the media questioned whether a sample returned from space could ever stay free of contamination from Earth.

However, no contamination has been found in the JAXA curation facilities.

But let's take a look at what that takes... (brace yourselves)

My latest on Cosmos 👉
https://cosmos.isas.jaxa.jp/keeping-out-the-earth-protecting-the-asteroid-ryugu-sample-from-contamination/

Tsuda Yuichi, Project Manager for #Hayabusa2 and lead for the Extended Mission, Hayabusa2♯, is hinting at the bucket load of scrubbing the spacecraft went through in unmentionable solvents prior to launch in order to demonstrate that it was not only possible to collect a sample, but it could be held separate from the Earth as a veritable time capsule 🛰️.

So what DOES it take to keep a (planet)butt load of microbes OUT of an asteroid sample returned from space 🛰️?

On the other microbe-filled site, JAXA researchers who are working with the asteroid Ryugu sample returned by the Hayabusa2 mission commented on a few of the billion steps taken to keep Ryugu pristine. I am going to report right here...

The official statement has been released:

Bad things happened to a good asteroid grain, but not on JAXA turf 😐.

(And therefore, the asteroid Ryugu sample--aside from that one grain that died on the mean streets of London--that was returned by the Hayabusa2 mission is still free of contaminants from the Earth environment.)

https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/topics/003899.html

It me 🤸♂️! What fame! When you see a Ryugu grain in a public exhibit, it has been sealed up just like the grains for scientific study. These grains are a chip of the first rock formed in the Solar System before all that planet geo-chem-bio tumbling nonsense gets going. Were these chips key ingredients for the start of life? Could be...

Once back in Japan, the asteroid sample was opened in a clean chamber under vacuum or filled with pure nitrogen and which had been scrubbed cleaner than you can ever be and live. When asteroid grains are sent to another research laboratory, they're sealed in nitrogen inside one of the squeak clean chambers.

When that sample capsule hit Earth, the team had 100 hours to scoop that capsule up from the Australian desert and get it sealed away in the curation facilities in JAXA. Beyond that time, there was no guarantee the hermetic seal that was locking out the Earth's atmosphere would hold. They were back in Japan in 57 hours, and the sample capsule was in vacuum for most of that time!

Allow me to fix this @Gizmodo headline:

"Rare asteroid sample contaminated by microorganisms after exposure TO THE AIR"

A team from Imperial College received an asteroid Ryugu grain from JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission. The journal paper states that the sample was absent of Earthy evil when it arrived from JAXA then... they exposed it while sealing in resin 😑

The contamination speed is interesting, but the message here is wrong: proper protocols protect a celestial sample.

https://gizmodo.com/rare-asteroid-sample-contaminated-by-microorganisms-despite-scientists-best-efforts-2000528691

They're not admitting it in English, but the National Museum of Science and Nature in Tokyo is holding an exhibit from December 17 ~ January 13 of grains from ALL THREE OF HUMANITY'S ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN MISSIONS: Itokawa (#JAXA Hayabusa mission), Ryugu (JAXA Hayabusa2 mission) & Bennu (#NASA OSIRIS-REx mission).

If you're in Japan over the holiday season, do check this out:
https://www.kahaku.go.jp/event/2024/12hayabusaMMX/