This week, NASA will be sharing details on how it’s preparing to receive the first set of asteroid samples ever gathered by the agency, an achievement seven years in the making.
Media and NASA experts will gather in Utah’s western desert on Wednesday near the site where the sample capsule will land in under a month’s time to learn about the culmination of the OSIRIS-REx mission.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made contact with the asteroid Bennu more than 200 million miles away back in Oct. 2020, then stored the samples for travel.
Since asteroids are among the oldest objects in our solar system, samples taken from them may be able to provide clues for how Earth evolved and how key elements reached the planet in its earliest days.
Bennu is “especially exciting,” according to the CSA, because it has been around since the formation of the solar system, and has remained largely unchanged, making it a “cosmic time capsule”.
If the Bennu samples contain clay minerals or even organic molecules such as amino acids, it could support the theory that the building blocks of life could have been delivered to Earth by an asteroid centuries ago.
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This week, NASA will be sharing details on how it’s preparing to receive the first set of asteroid samples ever gathered by the agency, an achievement seven years in the making.
Media and NASA experts will gather in Utah’s western desert on Wednesday near the site where the sample capsule will land in under a month’s time to learn about the culmination of the OSIRIS-REx mission.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made contact with the asteroid Bennu more than 200 million miles away back in Oct. 2020, then stored the samples for travel.
Since asteroids are among the oldest objects in our solar system, samples taken from them may be able to provide clues for how Earth evolved and how key elements reached the planet in its earliest days.
Bennu is “especially exciting,” according to the CSA, because it has been around since the formation of the solar system, and has remained largely unchanged, making it a “cosmic time capsule”.
If the Bennu samples contain clay minerals or even organic molecules such as amino acids, it could support the theory that the building blocks of life could have been delivered to Earth by an asteroid centuries ago.
The original article contains 439 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!