NASA will make a special delivery to Earth this weekend. Next Sunday, a US space agency spacecraft will fly by our planet and leave behind the largest asteroid sample ever collected. This is the end of a mission that lasted seven years.
These are parts of an asteroid Bennu, rich in carbon, discovered in 1999. Its width is about half a kilometer, about the height of the Empire State Building in New York. Bennu orbits our Sun every 14 months and rotates on its axis every four hours. Scientists They expect to receive about 250 grams of fragments.
While this may not seem like much, it is actually much more than any other team has achieved. Japan, the only country to have discovered fragments of such bodies, brought back about a teaspoon of the depths of two other asteroids to Earth in 2010 and 2020: first from Itokawa and then, 10 years later, from Ryugu.
Asteroids are larger than a meteorite and smaller than a planet. They orbit the Sun and are among the oldest objects in the Solar System. That’s why scientists call them “time capsules” that can help us understand how the Earth was created and how life arose on it.
Bennu is believed to contain remnants of the formation of the solar system dating back to 4.5 billion years. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release a capsule containing a new asteroid sample toward the Uta Desert in the western United States, and then fly off to rendezvous with another asteroid.
An asteroid being studied by NASA may collide with Earth
In addition to revealing information about the origins of life, the samples collected by NASA may help us determine how to redirect this asteroid in a different direction. Because yes, scientists estimate that Bennu could get so close to Earth that may affect our planet on September 24, 2182. In about 159 years.
The OSIRIS-REx space probe launched in September 2016 to rendezvous with this asteroid. He traveled several times 3 billion kilometers, until he managed to reach Bennu in 2018. He spent another two years flying around the space rock, looking for the best place to collect samples.
Finally, in 2020, the spacecraft came close enough to the asteroid and deployed a vacuum cleaner about three meters long. It touched Bennu for a few moments, sucking in dust and rocks. The exact amount contained in the sample capsule in which the material was stored will not be known until it reaches Earth and is opened.
The capsule will be launched by parachute to ensure a safe landing. This is a critical moment. NASA’s first test mission by the space probe ended in an explosion in 2004. The capsule carried particles from the solar wind. But when it was released onto Earth, it crashed into the Utah desert and broke into pieces, endangering the samples.
NASA will broadcast the capsule landing live. Its dimensions are about 81 centimeters in width and 50 centimeters in height. The parachute will reduce your speed during the last 1.6 kilometers of your fall, allowing you to make a soft landing. The plan is to then fly it by helicopter to a nearby laboratory and then fly it the next day to Houston, where NASA’s Johnson Space Center is located.
Source: Hiper Textual
