NASA's first effort to retrieve samples from an asteroid will send a capsule that contains extraterrestrial pebbles and dust plunging towards a Utah desert on Sunday.
Shockingly, the arm basically plunged in, as the asteroid behaved more like a liquid than a solid, suggesting it's composed of rocky bits just barely held together by gravity.
"We had planned to have a very leisurely operation to stow it," says Dworkin."That was out the window. We had to move quickly." This will occur when the spacecraft is about 67,000 miles away, and the capsule will be aimed at a target zone in the desert that's about 250 square miles. No one expects any kind of alien life, says Lauretta. Bennu has been pummeled with radiation for eons, making it highly inhospitable. His team worked with NASA's planetary protection office, which found that returning bits of this asteroid to Earth required no special precautions.
Lauretta says that on Tuesday morning, if all goes according to the schedule, they'll open the canister inside a special lab.
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