NASA is about to bring a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth

NASA is about to bring a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth
Osiris-Rex spacecraft. Photo: NASA

According to the plan, the OSIRIS-REx probe will return samples to Earth in the desert in Utah state, western United States. The sample was collected from asteroid Bennu nearly three years ago and has been stored on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft since then. When about 108,000 km from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will drop the sample capsule. This capsule’s journey back into the Earth’s atmosphere will last about 13 minutes before landing at the military test site in Utah at 9:00 a.m. on September 24 local time (10:00 p.m. on the same day Vietnamese time). Male).

Ms. Sandra Freund, Lockheed Martin’s OSIRIS-REx program manager, said the mission to return samples to Earth is always difficult because there can be many problems.

Once the capsule lands safely in the desert, a team of scientists will check the sample’s condition before moving it to a temporary containment room to clean the sample. A day later, the sample will be transferred to a specialized laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

NASA estimates the sample may contain about 250 grams of material, more than the original collection target of 60 grams.



Scientists hope the sample will help understand more about the formation of the solar system and how Earth became a habitable planet. NASA is expected to announce the first results of this sample at a press conference on October 11.

For a long time, space scientists have been interested in studying the most primitive samples of asteroids because this helps discover the origin of life and the solar system. Previously, Japanese probes brought the first samples from two asteroids back to Earth, in 2010 and 2020, respectively.

Source: Vietnamese