Characteristics of dark and bright areas on the asteroid Ryugu

The Japanese Hayabusa2 space mission approached the Near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu in June 2018. Since then, it is taking data and mapping in detail the asteroid surface, finding a very dark and boulder rich asteroid with very homogenous spectral reflectance properties in the near IR. By using the data obtained by the NIRS3 spectrometer, the intent of this work is to detect dark and bright patches and to study their characteristics, with the support of statistical and machine learning tools.