A first glimpse of the jackpot of a seven-year mission to recover fragments of an asteroid was unveiled this month.
NASA officials in Houston, Texas, showed images of rock chunks and dark space dust particles from the asteroid Bennu and described their initial observations. The mission, Osiris-Rex, concluded in September when a capsule containing the asteroid samples re-entered through Earth’s atmosphere, was recovered in the Utah desert and taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
When technicians penetrated the outer container, they discovered some material leaking. The scientists were able to perform a quick analysis that revealed some initial findings.
The asteroid chunks included soaked clay minerals. Its presence could help solve how Earth became a water planet. Asteroids similar to Bennu may have crashed into Earth, filling our oceans.
“The reason why Earth is a habitable world, why we have oceans, lakes, rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals like the ones we’re seeing from Bennu landed on Earth four billion years ago,” he said. Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona and the mission’s principal investigator, at a recent NASA event.
The materials also contained sulfur, an element crucial for many geological transformations in rocks. “It determines how quickly things melt and is also fundamental to biology,” Lauretta said. The scientists also found magnetite, an iron oxide mineral that can act as a catalyst in organic chemical reactions.
“We’re looking at the types of minerals that may have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth,” Lauretta said.
The asteroid is also full of carbon, the key element in the foundations of life. One sample contained 4.7 percent carbon by weight.
The leak provided 1.5 grams of dust and particles. While it provides an early look at what’s inside, that material has slowed work to reach the sample collection tool’s main compartment.
“We found much more sample than we anticipated” even before reaching the main part of the capsule. “We need to collect each grain very meticulously and carefully,” said Francis McCubbin, curator of astromaterials at the Johnson Space Center.
Osiris-Rex was launched in 2016 and arrived at Bennu a couple of years later, conducting remote observations. He identified carbonate minerals on the asteroid, which normally form in environments that include both hot water and carbon dioxide. That suggests that the larger object that Bennu was once a part of had hot springs or some other hydrothermal system. If so, then it is possible that there is liquid water that has been trapped in the pores of minerals for several billion years.
Scientists will also look for amino acids that have been found in meteorites that have fallen to Earth. Meteorites become contaminated quickly on Earth, but with the Bennu sample, scientists will, for the first time, be able to observe the amino acids used in living things on a pristine asteroid.
Osiris-Rex research could help protect Earth in the future. About 490 meters wide, Bennu is classified as a near-Earth asteroid, and scientists say there is a 1 in 1,750 chance it could hit Earth during a series of very close passes between 2175 and 2175. 2199.
Bennu is not large enough to cause planet-wide extinctions. But it would be catastrophic at the impact site.
By: KENNETH CHANG
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6950626, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-23 19:40:07
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