REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON — Planet Earth will receive a special delivery, the largest sample from an asteroid. A spaceship NASA will fly past Earth on Sunday (23/9/2023) and drop at least a piece of debris taken from the asteroid Bennu, capping a seven-year search.
The sample capsule will be parachuted into the Utah desert, United States, as the Osiris-Rex spacecraft’s mothership launches to rendezvous with another asteroid. Scientists estimate they will get about 250 grams of gravel and dust.
Although this may seem small, this amount is more than the teaspoon that Japan brought back from the other two asteroids. No other country has managed to find pieces of asteroids, which could reveal mysteries of the early solar system that could help explain the Earth and how life could form.
The impending landfall ends a 6.2 billion kilometer journey marked by an encounter with carbon-rich Bennu. A unique landing and sampling, a jammed lid that spilled some of the deposits into space, and now finally the first asteroid sample NASA come to Earth.
“I asked myself how many moving moments you can experience in one lifetime because I felt like I might have reached my limits,” said Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona and the mission’s lead scientist.
To learn more about the unusual sample arrival, take a look at the spacecraft and its payload.
Long journey
The asteroid hunter Osiris-Rex launched its billion-dollar mission in 2016. It arrived at Bennu in 2018 and spent the next two years flying around the tiny, rotating space rock and looking for the best places to take samples.
Three years ago, the spacecraft swooped down and reached out with a three-meter vacuum wand, momentarily touching the asteroid’s surface and sucking up dust and gravel. The device presses with such force and grips in such a way that the rocks are squeezed around the edges of the lid.
As the samples drifted into space, Lauretta and her team rushed to load the remaining material into the capsule. The exact amount inside will not be known until the container is opened.
Asteroid Bennu
This asteroid, discovered in 1999, is believed to be the remains of a much larger asteroid that collided with another space rock. It is nearly half a kilometer wide, about as tall as the Empire State Building and its rough, black surface is littered with huge boulders.
Round like a spinning top, Bennu orbits the sun every 14 months, while rotating every four hours. Scientists believe Bennu holds remnants of the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
The asteroid will probably approach and hit Earth on September 24, 2182 or exactly 159 years after the first piece of the asteroid arrived. According to Lauretta, close study of Osiris-Rex could help humanity figure out how to deflect Bennu if necessary.
The important day Osiris-Rex will release…
source: AP
2023-09-23 01:06:00
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