Maitrayee Bose, Indian-origin cosmochemist along with Ziliang Jin, a postdoctoral scholar in Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, have found water in asteroid Itokawa samples collected by the Japanese space probe Hayabusa. The research paper detailing the analysis of five of the particles from the asteroid samples was published in the journal Science Advances on 8th May 2019. Itokawa is a peanut-shaped S-type asteroid about 1,800 feet long and 700 to 1,000 feet wide. It circles the Sun every 18 months at an average distance of 1.3 times the Earth-Sun distance. The samples were collected from an area on Itokawa known as the Muses Sea, which is smooth and dusty.
