NASA collects first samples of asteroid that fell to Earth

The first samples of a asteroid collected by the POT in deep space parachuted into a capsule over the Utah desert on Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the capsule with the samples at an altitude of 100,000 kilometers (63,000 miles). The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote stretch of military terrain, while the mother ship set off for another asteroid.

“We have landing!” announced Operation Mission Recovery. Officials later said the parachute opened at an altitude four times higher than expected — at about 6,100 meters (20,000 feet) — basing that claim on the rate of deceleration.

To everyone’s relief, the capsule was intact and unbreached, leaving its 4.5 billion-year-old samples free of external contamination. Two hours after landing, the capsule was inside a temporary sterile room at the Utah Test and Training Range, where it was taken by helicopter.

The sealed container with the samples will be airlifted Monday to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be opened in a new, purpose-built laboratory. In the building there are already hundreds of kilos of Moon rocks collected by astronauts from the Apollo project.

“We are eager to open it. For me, real science is just beginning.”said Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, the scientist leading the mission. He will travel to Texas along with the samples.

Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, added that the samples “are going to be a treasure trove for scientific analysis for years and years and years to come.”

Scientists estimate the capsule contains at least a cup’s worth of debris from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but they won’t know for sure until they open the container in a day or two. Some of the material dispersed and floated when the ship collected excess material, causing the container lid to jam during collection three years ago.

Japan, the only other country to have brought back asteroid samples, collected about a teaspoon in a couple of missions.

The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the largest shipment ever obtained from space from beyond the Moon. The samples, building blocks preserved from the dawn of our solar system, will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed, providing a “extraordinary glimpse” to what things were like 4.5 billion years ago, said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator.

Osiris-Rex, the mothership, took off in 2016 to carry out the $1 billion mission. It arrived at Bennu two years later and, using a vacuum cleaner with a long wand, collected debris from the small round space rock in 2020. When it returned, the spacecraft had traveled 6.2 billion kilometers (4 billion miles).

Source: AP