NASA set to unveil first pictures of Bennu asteroid sample

The sample, collected by the OSRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, will be unveiled at NASA’s Johnston Space Center in Houston. According to scientists, Bennu, a small, carbon-rich body discovered in 1999, appears to be made up of a loose collection of rocks, like a rubble pile.

Bennu holds clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and perhaps even the evolution of life.

Bennu’s present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since forming some 4.5 billion years ago.

The capsule containing Bennu asteroid sample was parachuted into the Utah desert.

Later, the capsule and its contents were examined in a clean room at the Utah Test and Training range near the landing site. The capsule was then flown to the Johnson center, where its inner canister was opened in order for samples to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

The Bennu asteroid sample is the third and by far the biggest ever returned to Earth for analysis. Before this two similar missions by Japan’s space agency were carried out in 2010 and 2020.

Samples returned in 2020 by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 from Ryugu, another near-Earth asteroid, were found to contain two organic compounds, buttressing the hypothesis that celestial objects such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the young planet with the primordial ingredients for life.

OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting the asteroid before venturing close enough to snatch a sample of the loose surface material with its robotic arm on Oct. 20, 2020.

On Thursday, NASA will launch another mission to a more distant asteroid called Psyche, a metal-rich body believed to be the remnant core of a protoplanet. 

(With inputs from agencies)

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Updated: 11 Oct 2023, 09:00 PM IST