'Crazy' rocky surface of asteroid Ryugu revealed in MASCOT Lander images

BERLIN -- A shoebox-sized European space robot turned up a few surprises when it hopped around on an asteroid last week. In newly released images, the surface of the asteroid Ryugu is "even crazier" than expected, said Ralf Jaumann of the German Aerospace Center's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, the scientific director of the MASCOT mission. "Everything is covered in rough blocks and strewn with boulders," he added in an image release. With a diameter of about 3,000 feet (900 meters), Ryugu is one of 17,000 known near-Earth asteroids, and it's made up of some of the most primordial material in the solar system. Studying the space rock's properties and composition could help scientists understand the building blocks of planet formation.