On Sunday, rock and dust samples obtained by the Osiris Rex mission from the asteroid Bennu arrived safely on Earth after a journey that lasted more than two years and covered 1.9 billion kilometers. Those from NASA are more than excited and are following the stage of analysis of the brought rocks.

The capsule containing Bennu’s sample has been delivered to the laboratoryPhoto: KEEGAN BARBER/UPI/Profimedia

Four helicopters arrived on the scene on Sunday, the capsule was found quickly and in very good condition, as the parachutes had deployed and provided braking from 44,000 km/h to 20 km/h in less than 15 minutes.

  • VIDEO. Samples collected by the Osiris Rex probe from the asteroid Bennu have safely arrived on Earth seven years after the mission began

The capsule was wrapped in insulating film and taken to a sterile room at a US military base in Utah, and on Monday the samples will be taken to NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the analysis department analyzes materials from space, such as samples lunar rocks

This is the first time that the Americans brought back samples from an asteroid, so far only the Japanese managed to do it, in two missions, in 2010 and 2020. The big difference is that the number is several tens of times higher than the Mission returned to Earth the Japanese Hayabusa2 in 2020. It was estimated that there were 250 grams of stones, compared to the 5 grams that the Japanese brought from Ryugu.

On Tuesday, the final analysis will be carried out and the samples will be separated, as they have to go to 60 laboratories in different parts of the world.

There is a large plan for scientific analysis of the samples over the next two years, mainly with JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

The first in-depth findings will be published in October, when we will learn more about Bennu’s composition and compare it to samples brought back by the Japanese from the two asteroids they sent missions to: Itokawa and Ryuga.

For astronomers, these samples are very valuable because we are talking about material that is more than 4.5 billion years old, and asteroids have changed very little, so they tell us a lot about the “bricks” of matter from which the planets were born.

“It was an incredible day,” said Lori Glaze of NASA. “These samples are endless gifts. They are a treasure… for scientific analysis for years to come, both for our children and for those yet to be born.”

Sources: AFP, New York Times, Guardian