Recently, NASA scientists opened a container containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu, and what they found exceeded their expectations.
On September 26, when researchers examined the extracted content, they came across the abundance of a dark material and fine-grained, around the mechanism applied to collect extraterrestrial rocks and soil.
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Such an unexpected discovery, even before analyzing the main sample, could provide crucial information about the history of the asteroid Bennu.
The OSIRIS-REx mission of NASA, which culminated in the collection of the sample in September, had a seven-year journey, traveling to Bennu, located around 320 million kilometers from Earth, and returning with the sample.
The total distance traveled was approximately 6.2 billion kilometers. To give you an idea, this mileage is enough to circle planet Earth 155 thousand times.
The sample, which historically landed in the Utah desert on September 24, was carefully transported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where a dedicated room was built for the analysis of the celestial body.
(Image: disclosure)
Asteroids, like Bennu, are remnants of the early days of the solar system, so they can provide valuable information about the formation of planets.
Furthermore, understanding their composition and orbits is also fundamental to protecting the Earth from possible asteroid impacts.
By using the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) to collect the sample in October In 2020, OSIRIS-REx gathered so much material that the particles were visible floating in space before being stored.
This led scientists to face an unusual “problem”, the abundance of material that is taking longer than expected to be collected.
Christopher Snead, deputy curator lead at OSIRIS-REx, described this as the “best problem” possible, pointing out that there is a surprising amount of material outside of the TAGSAM mechanism, something he considers interesting.
The actual asteroid sample will be revealed on October 11 during a NASA live broadcast. Meanwhile, the preliminary examination of the substance taken from outside TAGSAM is already underway.
This initial assessment is carried out using scanning electron microscopes, X-rays, infrared instruments, among other equipment.
The expectation is that scientists will be able to understand the chemical composition of the sample, detect hydrated minerals and organic particles, as well as the identification of specific minerals present in the asteroid.
These findings, in turn, may offer insights into the formation of solar system and possibly about how the Earth acquired essential elements, such as water, in its early days.
