Taken from the other side of the solar system Asteroids A fragment has reached Earth, a major success of NASA’s Osiris Rex mission.
NASA The spacecraft flew to the asteroid Bennu for several years and after retrieving a piece of it, sent it back to Earth so that researchers could study it. After the sample of the planet reached the Earth, the mission is complete, which took seven years. The spacecraft traveled four billion miles to reach the planet. This space mission cost more than one billion dollars.
Scientists are hopeful that analyzing this material can help determine how planets formed and how they evolved. This material may even shed light on the question of how life began. Since Bennu is about four and a half billion years old, the specimen is early solar system It is like observing. NASA has called this artifact a ‘time capsule’.
Bennu is also notable for being called the ‘most dangerous asteroid’. This is the NASA classification that determines how much of a threat an asteroid could pose to Earth.
This is the first time NASA has brought a fragment of an asteroid back to Earth, and the first time anyone has done so since 2020. It is also the largest piece ever brought back to Earth from an asteroid, weighing around 250 grams.
After a journey of nearly 3.9 billion miles, the #OSIRISREx asteroid sample return capsule is back on Earth. Teams perform the initial safety assessment—the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system. pic.twitter.com/KVDWiovago
— NASA (@NASA) September 24, 2023
NASA sent a team in helicopters to retrieve the sample from the asteroid’s landing site and place it in a sealed container to ensure no contamination. Since the sample was obtained directly from the asteroid, it would not contain any material from Earth. On the contrary, asteroids that fall on Earth are contaminated with terrestrial elements.
NASA will distribute sample portions to more than two hundred individuals from more than 38 global organizations. Among them are British scientists.
The Osiris Rex mission lifted off from Earth in September 2016 and arrived at asteroid Bennu in October 2018. It collected samples in October 2020, and began its return journey in April 2021.
Both the sample and the spacecraft have since made a return trip to the other side of the solar system. After releasing the sample capsule separately, Osiris Rex changed course to continue its mission and began traveling towards another asteroid named ‘Apopheis’, where it will arrive in 2029.
Apophis is also a potential threat to Earth. At times, it has even challenged Beno’s top position in the ranking of the most dangerous space objects. But recent research has shown that the risk from Apophis is lower than that from Beno.
Ashley King, UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellow at the Natural History Museum, said: ‘Osiris Rex studied asteroid Bennu for more than two years and found evidence of organics and minerals being chemically altered by water. . These are key ingredients for understanding the formation of Earth-like planets, so we are delighted to be among the first researchers to study the samples returned from Bennu.’
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‘We believe that the Bennu samples may be similar to the recent Winchcome meteorites, but they will be largely free of contamination from the Earth’s environment and more pure.’
Dr Sarah Crowther, Research Fellow in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester, said: ‘It is an honor to be selected to be part of the Osiris Rex sample analysis team working with some of the best scientists from around the world.
‘We are excited to receive samples in the coming weeks and months, start analyzing them and see what asteroid Bennu has to offer.
‘A lot of our research focuses on meteorites and we can learn a lot about the history of the solar system from them. Meteors heat up as they pass through the Earth’s atmosphere. They can remain on the ground for many years. Local environment and climate can therefore alter or even erase important information about their structure and history.’
“Sampling missions like the Osiris Rex are extremely important because the samples they send are pure,” he said.
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