Primordial matter in the solar system is being studied in the laboratory

The first samples that space probes recently brought to Earth from asteroids are now being analyzed. What are you investigating? A laboratory visit

ZThe code for the safe must first be entered. There is a click and a mass of tubes and boxes appear behind the steel door. “These are the lunar samples,” says Thorsten Kleine. That almost sounds a little too casual – but the souvenirs from the Apollo astronauts are no longer the most valuable things for the director of the Planetary Sciences Department at the Max Planck Institute for solar system research in Göttingen has in his care. It's in the little black plastic case he pulls out from behind the moon crumbs. Inside lies a heavy cylinder made of stainless steel, shrink-wrapped in transparent film. Only a small round glass window in the lid allows a view of the airtight contents: a few black grains.

They come from beyond the moon. The Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 picked up the samples on the asteroid “Ryugu” and brought them to Earth on St. Nicholas Day 2020. It was the first time that scientists had gotten their hands on macroscopic amounts of pristine material from the translunar solar system. NASA has now followed suit. On September 24th, the sample return canister from their Osiris-Rex mission landed on Earth, and since then the Americans have been in possession of at least 70 grams of material from the asteroid “Bennu”. How much there is in total is still unclear, because before Christmas two of the 35 screws in the canister were still stuck. The material from Bennu that was picked out with tweezers, including a 3.5 centimeter long chunk, was only examined cursorily – at least it was possible Dante Laurettathe mission's chief scientist, did not report anything in his presentation at a meeting in San Francisco on December 12th that would have stimulated NASA to undertake major PR activities.