2023-10-29 06:00:01
Samples from the asteroid Bennu will be analyzed in France in one of the rare laboratories capable of working on noble gases, the CRPG in Nancy. The laboratory expects the first samples in a few days.
“As explained in the NASA, we are going to study something that has been put in the refrigerator for 4.5 billion years. It’s an exhilarating moment.” Bernard Marty, professor at the École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie and researcher at the Center for Petrographic and Geochemical Research (CRPG) is bursting with enthusiasm when we contact him, he attends the opening by videoconference live, Johnson Space Center (Texas) United States, of the capsule which contains a precious sample. Two hundred and fifty grams of material collected in 2020 from the asteroid Bennu, by the American probe Osiris-Rex. The probe, which left in 2016, dropped the capsule containing the sample on Earth on September 24, 2023, in the Utah desert.
Bernard Marty is part, with his team, of the handful of researchers in the world who will be able to analyze some fragments of this sample. “This mission brought back samples, dust and grains from an asteroid, among the most primitive known. These are asteroids which are rich in “volatile elements“. The volatile elements are carbon, nitrogen, rare gases, but also indications of the presence of water which has disappeared. There is no longer any water left, but there remain the minerals which interacted with her.“
For scientists, searching for these clues is like investigating the origins of life on Earth. “We may find evidence that they carry the elements that allowed life to develop on earth..
“This is the second time we will have samples from asteroids. There has already been the Ayabussa2 mission, a Japanese mission in December 2020“, he explains to us. “The Japanese mission had brought back five grams, which was already an extraordinary feat. There, with two hundred and fifty grams, this will make it possible to verify the diversity of primitive matter and to carry out analyses, which require much more equipment.“In reality, Bernard Marty tells us that he only needs very little material.” We just need a few milligrams. Our tools are very sensitive.“
Bernard Marty and his team are specialized in gaz nobles. “The samples arrive in individual metal boxes, stored under a nitrogen atmosphere. We will use a small hood with a nitrogen flow, which will allow us to transfer samples into our analytical system without contact with the ambient air. Our analytical system is a sort of big box with a porthole. Then, we will use a laser to heat them under ultra-high vacuum. Then we can find things.
We are going to have objects that have hardly moved for 4.5 billion years, since the first moments of formation of the solar system.
Bernard Marty, professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie and researcher at CRPG
Isotopic ratios make it possible to trace the origin of the different components. We will undoubtedly find grains, which were formed in other stars, which do not come from the solar system, which accumulated when the solar system was born. We are going to have a whole range of extraterrestrial objects, which we do not necessarily know very well at the moment. We don’t know what type of components we will find. We may have dust from other stars. We can have isotopes produced by cosmic radiation throughout the history of the solar system. We are opening a new world.”
The lid of the container containing the Bennu samples brought back by the OSIRIS-REx mission this Sunday was opened at JSC (Houston). We can see the first very black grains of the asteroid on the edges of the container and on the lid!
— CRPG (@CrpgNancy) September 28, 2023
Samples that give our scientist a superpower, that of traveling in time and space. “We are going to have objects that have hardly moved for 4.5 billion years, since the first moments of formation of the solar system.“On noble gases, only three laboratories in the world will have the chance to carry out these analyses: an American, a Swiss and in France, the CRPG in Nancy.
Another CRPG team should also receive a sample, but a little later. That of the ion probe. Laurette Pianiet Yves Marrocchiboth researchers in cosmochemistry at the CRPG (CNRS/Université de Lorraine) will receive what scientists call thin blades, thin layers of matter, which they will bombard with their ionic probes. These are isotopic analyses. Their objective: to find clues to the presence of water, as Laurette explains to us Plans, : “lOxygen isotopies give us information on the origin of the dust that made up the asteroid Bennu.
I worked specifically on the hydrogen of the grains of the asteroid Riugu, from the Japanese mission Ayabusa2. The measurements were made in the spring of 2022. The scientific article was published only this year. On the Bennu grains, we plan to do more different analyses.
We will be able to see if the samples are very close to what we have in meteorite collections, those recovered on Earth after their fall, or if it will deviate from it. Secretly, scientists hope to find other things there : “we would have something new. But if it is similar, it will still give a lot of information on the ability we have to study an asteroid when we send a probe. To know its composition remotely, we will to be able to compare what we do in the laboratory with analyzes carried out by the probes when they were taking data around the asteroid.“
An ion probe at the CRPG in Nancy • © CEDRIC JACQUOT / MAXPPP
This team can also work on dating: “we can do dating with instruments. We use isotopes, which are unstable, which disintegrate and their rate of disintegration to go back to the age of the minerals and the assemblages of minerals which are in the meteorites. If we can by doing so, we will be able to get a clue as to the age of these objects.”
In all, two hundred and fifty researchers around the world will benefit from and work on these two hundred and fifty grams of material brought back by Osiris-Rex. “
I’m happy to be part of it“, Laurette Piani tells us. “What fascinates me, in this research, is trying to find answers to: why we are here. By looking at meteorites, we look at the origin of our planet and perhaps the origin of life. We work a little on the bricks, which could have been used for life to develop.“
In a communiquéfrom October 11, 2023, NASA already confirms: “Early studies of 4.5 billion-year-old sample of asteroid Bennu, collected in space and brought back to Earth by NASA, show evidence of high carbon and water content , which together could indicate that the building blocks of life on Earth could be found in rock.“
This is one of the other interests of the American mission: to study asteroids likely to hit the Earth. On its website, NASA indicates: “Bennu has no chance of hitting Earth until the mid-2100s. After that, the probability is very low, 1 in 1,750, or less than a tenth of a percent, until at least 2300. In the future distant, Bennu could hit Earth or even Venus, but this cannot be predicted with any precision. Indeed, being able to accurately predict the future movements of asteroids like Bennu is one of the scientific goals of the mission.”
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