A topic of interest for DIGIVATIONS INSTITUTE’s INNOVATION & Literary programs including DIGIVATIONS@CORNELL UNIVERSITY, https://lnkd.in/eYid7hFb this winter and summer of 2024 and DIGIVATIONS XGENS MODEL UN and 17 UN Sustainable Goals Institute, XGENS.org.
“The OSIRIS-REx mission was expected to collect at least 60 grams of material from asteroid Bennu, but it appears to have snagged a lot more, including some bonus material "covering the outside of the collector head, canister lid, and base," NASA said.
"The bounty of carbon-rich material and the abundant presence of water-bearing clay minerals are just the tip of the cosmic iceberg," University of Arizona professor of planetary science Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx, said in a statement.
NASA is planning to house about 70% of the asteroid sample at Johnson Space Center, setting aside some of it for scientists to study in the future.”
The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule landed in the Utah desert on Sept. 24 and arrived at Johnson the next day.
OSIRIS-REx gathered the sample in 2020 and then made its way back to Earth.
It is the largest sample of an asteroid ever returned to Earth.
After dropping the sample capsule to land on Earth, the spacecraft is continuing on its journey through space, targeting the asteroid Apophis next. (NASA has re-named the spacecraft OSIRIS-APEX in light of the extended mission.)
The big picture: Scientists think asteroids and comets are leftovers from the dawn of the solar system billons of years ago.
By studying these space rocks, researchers think they might eventually be able to piece together how water and even life was seeded on Earth early in our planet's history.
Wow, 10 years already!