The capsule that collected material samples from the asteroid Bennu turned out to bring more to Earth than scientists expected. As they began to take a closer look at it, they saw that in addition to the material collected in the main mechanism, around it “there is a lot of material that is also interesting in itself.”
At the end of September, the OSIRIS-REx space probe sent to Earth samples it had collected from the asteroid Bennu – one of the objects potentially dangerous to Earth. To get them, she had to cover 6.3 million kilometers. The contents of the container are a real time machine, allowing researchers to travel back 4.6 billion years, to the time when the Solar System was just forming. Scientists will test the samples, among other things, for the presence of water and check their chemical composition, and this research will help better understand the formation and evolution of the Solar System, including the Earth on which we live. We already know that the initial selection of material is slower than expected because there is more material brought from the asteroid than expected.
Watch the video Landing on an asteroid, observations of the beginning of the Universe. Here are the most important space missions [TOPtech]
Scientists opened a capsule from space. They were surprised by the abundance of materials
– The biggest problem is that there is so much material. It’s taking longer than we expected to assemble it, said OSIRIS-REx deputy curator Christopher Snead of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. – Apart from TAGSAM (i.e. the head of the sampling mechanism), there is a lot of material that is also interesting in itself. It’s truly spectacular that we have all this material there, he added.
The first sample taken from outside the TAGSAM head is already in the hands of scientists who are conducting its quick analysis. This will provide a preliminary understanding of the material brought from Bennu and what we can expect from the rest. “We have all the microanalytical techniques we can use to really tear it apart, almost down to the atomic scale,” said Lindsay Keller, a member of Johnson’s OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team. Rapid tests used, among others, scanning electron microscope (SEM), infrared measurements and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to better understand the sample.
When will we know the full contents of the samples?
In the coming weeks, the team of scientists will move the TAGSAM head to a specialized chamber, where they will perform a complex disassembly process to finally reveal the sample inside. Finally, the asteroid fragments will be separated and given to scientists for research purposes. Over the next year, some of the samples are to be sent to approximately 200 teams from around the world. About 70 percent however, the contents of the container will be secured and preserved for many decades.
2023-10-05 04:15:00
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