The largest sample collected by NASA from an asteroid in space arrives
A capsule containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu shortly after its landing in the US state of Utah. September 24, 2023 - REUTERS
A NASA capsule penetrated the Earth's atmosphere and landed in the desert of the American state of Utah on Sunday, carrying on board the largest soil sample ever collected from an asteroid, for scientists to benefit from.
The capsule separated from the OSIRIS-REx robotic vehicle, while the latter was passing at an altitude of 67,000 miles from Earth, to place its travels within a specific landing area west of Salt Lake City, in the US Army’s testing and training area in Utah.
This landing, which was broadcast live by NASA, culminated a six-year joint mission between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the University of Arizona.
This sample is the third to be transferred from an asteroid to Earth for analysis, after two similar missions by the Japanese Space Agency, which ended in 2010 and 2020, but this sample is the largest ever.
OSIRIS-REx collected its sample three years ago from the “Asteroid Bennu,” a small asteroid rich in carbon compounds discovered in 1999. It is classified as a “near-Earth object” because it passes relatively close to our planet every six years, but the chances of a collision are remote.
Bennu appears to be formed from a disassembled group of rocks, and is only 500 meters wide, but it is small compared to the Chicxulub asteroid that struck the Earth about 66 million years ago, eliminating the dinosaurs.
They stand in front of a capsule containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu shortly after it landed in the US state of Utah. September 24, 2023 - Reuters
The journey to the "asteroid Bennu"
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in September 2016, arrived at the Bennu asteroid in 2018, and then spent about two years orbiting the asteroid before getting close enough to extract a sample from its surface with its robotic arm on October 20, 2020.
The spacecraft embarked on a 1.2 billion-mile journey back to Earth in May 2021, which included orbiting the sun twice.
The Bennu sample is estimated at about 250 grams, which far exceeds the sample transported from the Ryugu asteroid in 2020, which amounted to five grams, and the small sample that came from the Itokawa asteroid in 2010.
Once the capsule is secured, the sample will be flown to a “clean room” at the Test and Training Area in Utah, for initial examination before being transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, to be divided into smaller samples for the benefit of about 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.
Source: websites