7 years, billions of kilometres, a handful of dust: NASA just brought back the largest-ever asteroid sample
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Tuesday, September 26, 2023
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Inside is likely to be the largest ever sample of dust and rock returned from an asteroid.
Key Points:
- Inside is likely to be the largest ever sample of dust and rock returned from an asteroid.
- Extracted and brought back with great technical ingenuity from an asteroid called Bennu, scientists will now study in search of clues about the origins of the Solar System and life itself.
The origins of the Solar System – and life
- Most asteroids are the rocky leftovers of failed planets and destructive collisions in the early Solar System, orbiting in a belt between Mars and Jupiter.
- These primitive bodies – some more than 4.5 billion years old – can also shed light on the origins of life, because they tell us about the distribution of water, minerals and other elements such as carbon.
- There is also an element of self-interest in studying these asteroids, to understand the risk they may pose if they are heading Earth’s way.
- There are more than 70,000 meteorites in collections around the world, but we know the origins of less than 0.1% of them.
Bringing pieces of space back to Earth
- They can bring pieces from a different planet or asteroid back to Earth to study.
- The first such mission was to the Moon, bringing back lunar samples for analysis.
- The Hayabusa mission, launched in 2003 by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, returned less than 1 milligram from asteroid Itokawa.
- We will know for sure once the sample is carefully examined at Johnson Space Centre over the coming days.
The sound of fireballs
- There are six OSIRIS-REx mission scientists from Curtin (including one of us – Nick Timms), and they will be among those receiving the first wave of samples in the coming weeks.
- Read more:
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is about to drop a chunk of asteroid in the Australian outbackFireballs, or really bright shooting stars from large space rocks, are quite rare and impossible to predict.
- When objects from outer space enter the atmosphere, travelling much faster than the speed of sound, they ignite the air to create a fireball and also trigger other less-studied phenomena such as shockwaves – which can be hazardous.
What’s next?
- Both of these spacecraft dropped their precious samples to Earth and have continued on with the aim of future asteroid fly-bys.
- The mission, now renamed “OSIRIS-APEX”, has already begun to redirect itself towards an asteroid called Apophis, which it will intercept not long after the asteroid zooms past Earth in April 2029.