NASA has successfully collected samples from the asteroid Bennu, after a capsule containing around 250 grams of the space rock in the desert near Salt Lake City, Utah on Sunday. 快猫短视频s hope that Bennu, which is older than Earth, could help explain how the solar system formed.
The capsule has been making its way home since 2020, when NASA鈥檚 OSIRIS-REx spacecraft extracted samples from the asteroid. The final, riskiest part of the mission involved a controlled freefall through Earth鈥檚 atmosphere, following the release of the sample capsule by OSIRIS-Rex at around a third of the distance between Earth and the moon.
Reaching speeds of 44,500 kilometres per hour, the capsule used its heat shields and two parachutes to protect the precious cargo and control its descent towards Earth, touching down at a leisurely 18 kilometres per hour.
Advertisement
鈥淏oy, did we stick that landing,鈥� said OSIRIS-REx鈥檚 principal investigator , in . 鈥淚t was just sitting right there, a few tens of feet right off a nice road, a perfect place for the helicopters to land. It didn鈥檛 move, it didn鈥檛 roll, it didn鈥檛 bounce, it just made a tiny little divot in the Utah soil.鈥�
Within 90 minutes of landing, NASA鈥檚 tracking instruments located the capsule and helicopters transported it to a makeshift clean room in a military hangar, where the sample was immersed in a continuous flow of nitrogen to keep it free of contaminants from Earth and preserve the pristine contents.
Today, the capsule will make its way by plane to NASA鈥檚 Johnson Space Center in Houston, where researchers will carefully prise apart the canister and categorise the sample inside. Once the rocks have been weighed and inventoried, they will be given to research groups around the world to investigate further.
As well as learning about the solar system鈥檚 formation, scientists hope that Bennu might tell us about how water and organic molecules, essential ingredients for life, arrived on Earth. There is also a small risk that Bennu might one day crash into Earth, with a 0.057 per cent chance of a collision in the next 300 years. By better understanding the asteroid鈥檚 makeup, scientists hope that it will be easier to divert it with an impact mission, similar to NASA鈥檚 DART mission, if needed.
