Opening Osiris-Rex probe with asteroid sample, they find ‘black dust’

The Pot On Tuesday, the Osiris-Rex mission, which collected fragments of an asteroid, opened and announced that it had found “Black dust and debris” Inside, much of the model has yet to be explored.

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Seven years after liftoff, the probe landed on Sunday American desert in UtahAfter a high-risk maneuver.

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A sample taken from asteroid Bennu in 2020 contained about 250 grams of the material, the US space agency said.

During that operation, NASA realized that the lid of the collection container could not be closed. But the specimen was finally preserved and transferred to the study as planned.

However, due to this failure, scientists would find traces of the specimen outside the collection box, in the box in which it was placed.

On Tuesday, the first lid on the airtight chamber was opened Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA crews immediately “discovered black dust and debris,” the space agency announced, without specifying whether they were asteroid fragments.

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This material will be analyzed and a “Careful Extraction Process” From the collection box, the space agency wrote, “to access the core sample located inside.”

A press conference announcing the exhibition will be held on October 11.

Analysis of the composition of the asteroid Bennu will allow scientists to Better understand how the solar system formed and how Earth became habitable.

Scientists believe that this space body (500 meters in diameter) is rich in carbon and contains water molecules surrounded by minerals.

There is a small risk (one chance in 2,700). Bennu will hit Earth in 2182 and it will be devastating.

In 2022, NASA managed to deflect an asteroid’s path.

AFP