NASA scientists were surprised by the amount of unique sample taken from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu

Scientists have taken their first look at a sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and found much more to study than they expected.

When scientists opened the sample container on September 26, researchers found an abundance of dark, fine-grained material on the inside of the container’s lid and base, surrounding a mechanism used to collect extraterrestrial rocks and soil. This unexpected debris could provide key information about the asteroid even before the primary sample is analyzed, CNN notes.

The historic landing of the sample in the Utah desert on September 24 marked the culmination of NASA’s 7-year OSIRIS-Rex mission, which flew to the asteroid Bennu approximately 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) from Earth, landed on the asteroid, and then flew back past Earth for sample reset. (Total travel distance: about 3.86 billion miles, notes CNN).

The mission team picked up the container the day after it arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which has a clean room specially built to thoroughly analyze the space sample.

Asteroids are remnants of the formation of the solar system, providing insight into what those chaotic early days were like when planets formed and took their places, CNN explains. But near-Earth asteroids also pose a threat to our planet, so understanding their composition and orbits is key to finding the best ways to deflect space rocks when they collide with Earth.

When OSIRIS-REx briefly used its TAGSAM, or Touch and Go Sample Collection Mechanism, to disturb Bennu’s surface and collect a sample in October 2020, it collected so much material that particles could be seen slowly drifting into space. before the manipulator was placed in the container.

This led scientists to believe that they might be able to quickly analyze whatever material they found when they opened the container – and there would be enough of it before they even got to the bulk of the sample located inside the mechanism’s head, meaning that scientists will need time to collect all the material. material.

“The biggest ‘challenge’ we face is that there is so much material that it takes longer to collect it than we expected,” said Christopher Sneed, deputy curator of OSIRIS-REx, in a statement. “There’s a lot of rich material outside of the TAGSAM arm that is interesting in its own right. It’s really amazing to have all that material there.”

The actual sample of the asteroid will not be shown until October 11th in a NASA livestream. The TAGSAM mechanism will be moved to a new custom glovebox for careful disassembly, revealing the sample inside.

In the meantime, rapid analysis of the sample is being carried out, which could provide initial insights from the material collected from the asteroid Bennu.

“We have all the microanalysis techniques we can apply to this to really take it apart, almost down to the atomic scale,” Lindsay Keller, a member of the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team, said in a statement.

The team will use scanning electron microscopes, X-rays and infrared instruments for the first study of the material collected at Bennu.

Together, these instruments will give scientists an idea of ​​the sample’s chemical composition, detect any hydrated minerals or organic particles, and identify any number of specific types of minerals present on the asteroid.

“You have truly first-class people, tools and equipment that will be working on these samples,” notes Lindsey Keller.

The initial analysis will help researchers better understand what to expect from the bulk sample collected at Bennu.

Scientists believe that asteroids like Bennu may have delivered essential elements such as water to Earth during the early stages of our planet’s formation, and studying a primordial sample could answer lingering questions about the origins of our solar system.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft that delivered the sample, now named OSIRIS-APEX, is on track to study the near-Earth asteroid Apophis, which will come close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye in 2029.