After seven years of waiting, scientists from the US space agency NASA have opened a sample of an asteroid collected in space. “Black dust and dirt” were found in the capsule. Now the sample is analyzed.
The capsule, loaded with about 250 grams of material, landed in the desert of the US state of Utah on Sunday after a seven-year journey through space (see video above).
The American space probe Osiris-Rex left for the asteroid Bennu in September 2016 and, after a four-year journey, landed on the celestial body for a few seconds in October 2020 to collect rock and dust samples. Bennu is located about 330 million kilometers from Earth and has a diameter of 500 meters.
Survived a journey of almost 3.9 billion miles
In an X-post (see above), NASA wrote: “This is our first look inside a space capsule from the OSIRISREx mission. It traveled to an asteroid called Bennu, took a sample of its surface and the sample return capsule landed on Earth yesterday. It was a journey of almost 6.9 billion kilometers!
First results from October
The samples are intended to help researchers better understand the formation of the solar system and the properties of dangerous near-Earth asteroids like Bennu. However, a large portion of the samples are not analyzed immediately, but stored for better-equipped researchers in the future. NASA has announced a press conference for October 11 at which it will present the first results of the studies.
Source: Krone
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