A rogue mineral found in a dust grain from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, which was visited and sampled by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission in 2020, could upend decades of perceived wisdom about the conditions in which some asteroids formed.
The mineral in question is named "djerfisherite" (pronounced juh-fisher-ite) after the American mineralogist Daniel Jerome Fisher, is an iron-nickel sulfide containing potassium. It is typically found on asteroids and in meteorites called "enstatite chondrites." These are quite rare and formed in the inner solar system some 4.6 billion years ago, in temperatures exceeding 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius).
