On Wednesday, NASA planned to reveal to the general public the contents of a securely sealed canister that was brought back to Earth last month containing the biggest soil sample ever taken from an asteroid’s surface.
Less than two weeks after it parachuted into the Utah desert, the OSRIS-REx probe, which retrieved debris from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu three years ago, was scheduled to be presented at NASA’s Johnston Space Centre in Houston.
The return capsule’s landing completed a six-year cooperative mission between the University of Arizona and the US space agency. It was the third sample of an asteroid that had ever been brought to Earth for study, and by far the largest, after two comparable missions by Japan’s space agency ending in 2010 and 2020.
Bennu is an artefact of the early solar system, much as other asteroids. Given that its current chemistry and mineralogy remain almost identical from when it formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, it may contain information on the beginnings and evolution of life on Earth as well as other rocky planets.
In a “clean room” at the Utah Test and Training range close to the landing site, the capsule and its contents were first inspected. After that, the capsule was transported to the Johnson Centre, where the inner canister was opened to allow samples to be divided into smaller specimens that would be sent to about 200 scientists working in 60 different laboratories worldwide.
The Bennu sample’s estimated weight upon landing was between 100 and 250 grammes.
On Wednesday, NASA was scheduled to release a more accurate measurement as well as an affirmation of whether the objective of gathering a pure sample, completely devoid of any terrestrial impurities, was accomplished.
It’s also anticipated that physical attributes like the material’s density, colour, and form—whether it’s made of dust, fine grains, boulders, or pebbles—will become apparent.
Two organic compounds were discovered in samples that the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 returned in 2020 from Ryugu, another near-Earth asteroid. These findings support the theory that comets, asteroids, and meteorites bombarded the early Earth, seeding the planet with the primordial ingredients for life.
Scientists have found that Bennu, a tiny, carbon-rich body that was discovered in 1999, resembles a mound of loose boulders. In comparison to the Chicxulub asteroid that impacted Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, it is tall but modest, measuring approximately three-tenths of a mile (500 metres) across, making it somewhat broader than the Empire State Building.
After taking off in 2016 and arriving at Bennu in 2018, OSIRIS-REx orbited the asteroid for over two years before getting close enough on October 20, 2020, to use its robotic arm to grab a sample of loose surface material.
