2023-10-11 10:16:13
On Wednesday, NASA was expected to reveal to the public for the first time what scientists found inside a hermetically sealed box that was returned to Earth last month along with the largest soil sample ever taken from Earth’s surface. an asteroid.
Material collected by the OSRIS-REx probe three years ago from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu was to be unveiled at NASA’s Johnston Space Center in Houston, just over two weeks after being parachuted into the Utah desert .
The return capsule’s landing capped a six-year joint mission by the US space agency and the University of Arizona. This is only the third asteroid sample, and by far the largest, to be returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by the Japanese space agency that concluded in 2010 and 2020.
Like other asteroids, Bennu is a remnant from the early days of the solar system. Its current chemistry and mineralogy having barely changed since its formation 4.5 billion years ago, it holds clues to the origin and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and perhaps even on the evolution of life.
The capsule and its contents were first examined in a “clean room” at the Utah Test and Training Range near the landing site. The capsule was then flown to the Johnson Center, where its interior chamber was opened so that the samples could be divided into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.
At the time of landing, the weight of Bennu’s sample was estimated to be between 100 and 250 grams (3.5 to 8.8 ounces).
NASA was expected to announce a more precise measurement on Wednesday and confirm whether the goal of collecting a pristine sample, completely free of terrestrial contamination, was achieved.
Physical characteristics such as density, color and shape of the material – whether rocks, pebbles, fine grains or dust – should also be revealed.
Samples taken in 2020 from Ryugu, another near-Earth asteroid, by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission revealed the presence of two organic compounds, supporting the hypothesis that celestial objects such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded Earth in its infancy seeded the young planet with the primordial ingredients of life.
According to scientists, Bennu, a small carbon-rich body discovered in 1999, appears to be made up of a collection of scattered rocks, like a pile of rubble. It measures about 500 meters in diameter, making it slightly wider than the Empire State Building, but tiny compared to the Chicxulub asteroid which struck Earth 66 million years ago, causing the disappearance of dinosaurs.
OSIRIS-REx was launched in 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018. It then spent almost two years in orbit around the asteroid before getting close enough to take a sample of the free materials from its surface at help of his robotic arm on October 20, 2020.
NASA is scheduled to launch a separate mission Thursday to a more distant asteroid called Psyche, a metal-rich body that is believed to be the remnant core of a protoplanet and the largest known metallic object in the solar system.
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