PRIMORDIAL RELIC
Like different asteroids, Bennu is a relic of the early photo voltaic system. As a result of its present-day chemistry and mineralogy are nearly unchanged since forming about 4.5 billion years in the past, it holds helpful clues to the origins and growth of rocky planets equivalent to Earth.
It could even comprise natural molecules much like these obligatory for the emergence of microbes.
Samples returned three years in the past by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 from Ryugu, one other near-Earth asteroid, had been discovered to comprise two natural compounds, buttressing the speculation that celestial objects equivalent to comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the younger planet with the primordial elements for all times.
OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent almost two years orbiting the asteroid earlier than venturing shut sufficient to grab a pattern of the unfastened floor materials with its robotic arm on Oct 20, 2020.
The spacecraft departed Bennu in Could 2021 for a 1.9-billion-km cruise again to Earth, together with two orbits across the solar. If mission management instructions the discharge of the sample-return capsule as deliberate, it will likely be jettisoned inside 67,000 miles of Earth for the ultimate leg of its return flight.
Hitting the higher ambiance at 35 occasions the velocity of sound, the capsule is predicted to glow purple sizzling because it plunges earthward and temperatures contained in the vessel peak at 2,800 levels Celsius.
Parachutes are designed to deploy close to the very finish of the descent, slowing the capsule to about 11 mph (17.7km) earlier than it falls gently onto the desert ground of northwestern Utah.
The Bennu pattern is estimated at 250g, far surpassing the 5g of fabric carried again from Ryugu in 2020 or the tiny specimen delivered from asteroid Itokawa in 2010.
Scientists hope the integrity of the capsule and interior cannister bearing the asteroid materials will probably be maintained by re-entry and touchdown, protecting the pattern pristine and freed from any terrestrial contamination.
On arrival, the pattern will probably be flown by helicopter to a “clear room” on the Utah check vary for preliminary examination, then transported to NASA’s Johnson House Middle in Houston, to be parcelled into smaller specimens promised to about 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the globe.
The primary portion of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, in the meantime, is predicted to sail on to discover yet one more near-Earth asteroid, named Apophis.