06/29/2024 – 15:49
Analysis of samples from the asteroid Bennu, carried out by scientists from the United States Aerospace Agency (NASA), revealed the possibility of a very intriguing past: the celestial body, which passes dangerously close to Earth every six years, may have been part of a planet with ocean.
The information was acquired thanks to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. After a round trip lasting seven years, the mission collected samples from the asteroid Bennu and brought them to Earth in September 2023. Initial analyses revealed that the object’s dust contains the original ingredients that formed our solar system, such as the presence of nitrogen, carbon and organic compounds, elements essential for life.
Now, according to an article published by the space agency on Wednesday, the 26th, scientists have noted the presence of water-soluble phosphates in the celestial body – which indicates that the asteroid could have separated from an ancient, small planet with an ocean, which disappeared long ago.
The findings are important for understanding the environments where Bennu’s materials originated and how simple elements transformed into complex molecules, opening new doors to understanding the origin of life on our planet.
An ancient relic from the early days of our solar system, the asteroid Bennu has seen more than 4.5 billion years of history. According to NASA, because its materials are so old, it is believed to contain organic molecules similar to those that may have been involved in the beginning of life on Earth.
As already shown by Estadão, scientists believe that the reason Earth has oceans, lakes and rivers is because it was hit by water-carrying asteroids between 4 billion and 4.5 billion years ago, making it a habitable planet. Furthermore, life on Earth is based on carbon, which forms bonds with other elements to produce proteins and enzymes, as well as the building blocks of DNA and RNA.
“Each week, the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team delivers new and sometimes surprising discoveries that are helping to place important constraints on the origin and evolution of Earth-like planets,” said Harold Connolly, co-lead author of the paper and sample scientist for the OSIRIS-REx mission, in a NASA statement.
Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, said in a NASA statement that although the presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, suggest a watery past for the asteroid, this hypothesis still needs to be confirmed. further investigation.
Now, dozens of other laboratories in the United States and around the world will receive portions of the Bennu sample from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in the coming months, and many more scientific papers describing analyses of the Bennu sample are expected in the coming years from the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team.
Launched on September 8, 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and collected a sample of rocks and dust from the surface. It was the first US mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.
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