2023-09-24 23:15:44
Canada will get part of the largest asteroid sample ever collected, which landed in the Utah desert in the United States on Sunday.
• Read also: NASA brings its first asteroid sample back to Earth
The sample from the asteroid Bennu is also the first collected for NASA.
Remember that it was at 10:52 a.m. Sunday morning that the sample return capsule of the OSIRIS-REx mission landed in the Utah desert.
This sample, taken in 2020 in space, must contain around 250 grams of material, according to the American space agency.
The majority will be kept for study by future generations, part will be used for experiments, while another part will be donated to Japan and Canada.
“The asteroid sample might provide answers to some fundamental questions regarding the history of the Solar System and the origin of water and life on Earth,” explained the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) .
It will be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for preservation and distribution among international scientists and collaborators. Specialists from the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian researchers will participate in the selection of the portion of the sample that will be allocated to Canada, whose arrival at the John H. Chapman Space Center (CSA headquarters) is scheduled for 2024 “at the earliest”.
Canada will thus become the fifth country to receive and keep an asteroid sample taken from space.
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