Asteroid dirt from Bennu could help reveal clues about the material that came together to make the solar system — and possibly where life comes from.
The Bennu sample is scheduled to arrive with a timing and precision that would make most terrestrial delivery services jealous. After a three-year journey back from the asteroid, the capsule should enter the atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT, NASA says. Following an initially scorching descent, the capsule will release a parachute and descend to its destination at Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, Utah.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is due to drop off its sample of the asteroid in Utah after a three-year trip back home.At about 250 grams, the asteroid sample in the OSIRIS-REx return capsule is just a bit heavier than a cup of coffee. But it is a huge cache of asteroid material, as far as mission scientists are concerned. The sample size far exceeds the quantity initially hoped for, Lauretta says.
The asteroid bits could also aid his investigations of how fragile some space rocks might be. “What happens to asteroids of the same type as Bennu when they get closer to the sun?” says Granvik, who is not a member of the OSIRIS-REx team. He and his colleagues propose that the interaction with the sun causes such “rubble pile asteroids,” made of loosely bound material, to break apart. The hypothesis could explain why there are fewer rubble pile asteroids in orbits near the sun than expected.
Like Lauretta, Sunshine hopes to learn how those processes ultimately led to the origins of life, but studying near-Earth asteroids is crucial for understanding the threats asteroids pose as well. “In principle, they could have given us life and they could take it away,” Sunshine says, “I mean, from the dinosaur’s perspective, they did take it away.”into a new orbit to see if it was possible to push asteroids off courses that threaten Earth .
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