NASA was set on Wednesday to provide a first peek for the public at what scientists found inside a tightly sealed canister that was returned to Earth last month carrying the largest soil sample ever scooped up from the surface of an asteroid.
The return capsule containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA?s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is seen shortly after touching down in the desert at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway, Utah, U.S. September 24, 2023. NASA/Keegan...
The landing of the return capsule capped a six-year joint mission of the U.S. space agency and the University of Arizona. It was only the third asteroid sample, and by far the biggest, ever returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan's space agency ending in 2010 and 2020.
The capsule and its contents were initially examined in a "clean room" at the Utah Test and Training range near the landing site. The capsule was then flown to the Johnson center, where its inner canister was opened in order for samples to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.
Samples returned in 2020 by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 from Ryugu, another near-Earth asteroid, were found to contain two organic compounds, buttressing the hypothesis that celestial objects such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the young planet with the primordial ingredients for life.
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