After years of work, the NASA team managed to bring samples of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu to Earth, through a capsule released by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
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The capsule successfully landed safely in a specific area in Utah, United States. After traveling billions of kilometers to get here, one of NASA’s top priorities was to protect the samples from terrestrial contamination, keeping them under a continuous flow of nitrogen.
The samples will be taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will be studied by scientists from around the world with the aim of deepening our understanding of the formation of the Solar System.
According to researchers, Bennu could be more than 4.5 billion years old, forming in the ‘early’ years of our Solar System. For this reason, this asteroid may contain valuable preserved information that can answer questions about the origin of organic materials and water that enabled life on Earth, as well as improve our understanding of potentially hazardous asteroids.
Today's #OSIRISREx asteroid sample landing isn't just the end of a 7-year, 3.9-billion-mile journey through space. It takes us 4.5 billion years back in time.
These rocks will help us understand the origin of organics and water that may have seeded life on Earth.… pic.twitter.com/sHLRrnWqAg
— NASA (@NASA) September 24, 2023
Source: NASA
