NASA began to gradually dismantle the capsule with samples of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu, located 2 billion km from Earth. It will take a lot of time, and everything will be done thoroughly. The first results should be announced on October 11.

The capsule landed safely on Earth in the Utah desert on Sunday, was taken to a special sterile room, and then arrived at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it is being carefully disassembled.

The base variant containing the samples has not yet been reached, but it shows black dust and rock debris, probably also from the asteroid.

The most interesting analyzes will be made when the main container containing approximately 250 grams of samples from Bennu is opened.

NASA said it had received a “treasure” by successfully delivering these samples to Earth, and would analyze them without haste, in complete safety, to ensure that nothing was lost and that the hard-earned samples were not contaminated by Earth substances.

NASA was also asked if it would be possible to find life forms and the answer was a resounding NO, as nothing would survive on Bennu.

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.

For researchers, 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 planets are formed.