NASA will provide the public with information about what exactly the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivered to Earth from the asteroid Bennu. The broadcast of this event will begin on October 11. A capsule containing samples of rock and dust from the surface of the asteroid Bennu landed at the Department of Defense training site in the Utah desert on September 24, and scientists have been conducting initial analyzes since then.
OSIRIS-REx took a sample from Bennu back in 2020 and then observed the asteroid for a year and a half before beginning its return to Earth in May 2021. After delivery of the capsule last month, it was flown to Houston, Texas, where it was opened at the Johnson Space Flight Center. Meanwhile, OSIRIS-REx continues its journey through space and is now heading towards the asteroid Apophis under a new mission name – OSIRIS-APEX.
Asteroid Bennu is estimated to be over 4.5 billion years old, meaning its materials may hold clues to the formation of the solar system and the origins of the building blocks of life on Earth.
To the delight of scientists, the mission was able to collect more material than expected. “The best possible ‘problem’ is when we have so much material that analysis takes longer than we expected,” said Christopher Snidr, deputy curation manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA.
