It took months to remove the last two of the 35 fixtures.
255g of sample including dust and small black stones revealed… To be analyzed
“The oldest material in the solar system… It will tell us how the Earth was born.”
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has completely opened the container containing samples collected from the asteroid Bennu after four months.
According to foreign media such as the British Guardian on the 21st (local time), NASA announced on the 19th that it had successfully removed two fixtures from a container containing samples collected from the asteroid Bennu, which is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years old.
According to reports, the container containing the sample was recovered from the Osiris-Rex asteroid probe in September last year, but had difficulty opening the lid immediately after recovery.
NASA scientists took several months to successfully remove the last two of the 35 fixtures. After opening the lid, NASA’s planetary science department posted a photo of dust and small stones inside the container on social media X (formerly Twitter), saying, “We finally opened it.”
The research team said they opened the containers using equipment made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel to ensure that the asteroid samples were not contaminated by Earth’s air. Afterwards, NASA plans to analyze about 255 grams of sample.
“These samples are some of the oldest material formed in our solar system,” said Ashley King of the Natural History Museum in London, England. “They will tell us what it took to create a planet like Earth and how it was mixed.”
“We are very pleased that our research team was able to successfully open the sample container,” Dr. Nicole Learning, a member of NASA’s Johnson Space Center Astrophysics Research Team, said in a statement.
Asteroid Bennu, the sample collection site, is an asteroid that passes close to Earth approximately once every six years. Scientists estimate that Bennu may have separated from a larger, carbon-rich asteroid about 700 million to 2 billion years ago, and samples from the asteroid could help determine Earth’s origins and how building blocks of life reached Earth. .
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.