NASA scientists recently conducted a survey of asteroid rocks that their spacecraft brought back from a distant “potentially hazardous” asteroid. The findings show that the spacecraft managed to take possession of a significant portion of the asteroid, almost more than double what was expected.
In 2023, the OSIRIS-REx capsule was delivered to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston after landing in the Utah desert on September 24. At the center, researchers began disassembling the capsule, which was much more difficult than expected because two of the capsule's 35 fasteners were stuck. Therefore, NASA scientists were initially only able to collect about 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of the sample that happened to rest on the lid of the canister.
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The breakthrough into the capsule was only achieved after numerous failed attempts to open it with specially designed and tested custom-made tools. When scientists finally opened the last two latches of the lid, they extracted another 51.2 grams of asteroid material.
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The space agency's 2016 mission, which launched in September, traveled 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) to reach Bennu before returning to its home planet, Earth. NASA's mission scientists spent about two years searching for the right landing site on Bennu's steep surface to collect samples of the asteroid.
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The asteroid sample consisted of about 122 grams of rocky space debris, which was almost more than double what was expected.
OSIRIS-REx fired a nitrogen blast from its Touch-and-Go sample acquisition mechanism when it first made contact with the asteroid. This nitrogen shot was to ensure that the spacecraft would make a precise landing, preventing it from sinking through the asteroid and thus trapping the sample.
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Rocky material can reveal the first signs of life
The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA's first spacecraft to coincidentally retrieve rocky space material from the asteroid Bennu, which could provide insight into the earliest signs necessary for life. It was discovered that the sample contained approximately 4.5 billion year old rocks from the earliest years of the solar system. Specimens of primordial elements believed to have given rise to life on Earth were also found in the sample.
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In addition, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft also found some building blocks of life on the asteroid Ryugu in 2020, including uracil, one of the nucleobases for RNA. The OSIRIS-REx mission researchers also hope to find other such biological precursors in the Bennu sample.
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Published: Feb 21, 2024 11:47 AM IST
