JawaPos.com – The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History showed samples of the Asteroid Bennu containing general life-forming elements for the first time, Wednesday (3/11).
Quoted from Live Science on Tuesday (7/11), the sample weighs 100 to 250 grams. The form is space rock debris collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
The sample is thought to contain some of the earliest precursors of life and is the first piece of space rock ever retrieved by NASA.
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NASA scientists first revealed the samples on October 11. The OSIRIS-REx capsule sent them towards Earth at speeds of up to 27,000 meters per hour.
The mission made a seven-year round trip of 4 billion miles before landing the samples safely in the Utah desert for transport to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, United States.
Bennu is a potentially dangerous asteroid that has a 1 in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth in 2182 (the highest probability of any known space object).
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However, scientists are more interested in what is trapped in space rocks, namely the possibility of life outside Earth.
“This is the largest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever returned to Earth,” said NASA Director Bill Nelson, quoted by NASA News.
Carbon and water molecules are the elements they want to find. These elements are important in the formation of planet Earth and they will help us determine the origin of the elements that can give rise to life.
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Water on Earth is said to be older than the planet itself and was possibly brought by asteroids and comets.
However, water is most likely not the only material that asteroids bring to Earth. The building blocks of life are also likely to hitch a ride on space rocks.
2023-11-07 11:58:00
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