A chunk of asteroid is coming to Earth
OSIRIS-REx . The probe will drop its cargo off en route to another asteroid, Apophis, at which it is due to arrive in 2029. Astronomers take a great interest in asteroids.
The solar system was formed around 4.5bn years ago, when a cloud of dust and gas collapsed under its own gravity into a disc, which in turn agglomerated into the sun and its planets. Asteroids are leftover chunks that never accrued enough mass to become planets. Studying them thus offers a window into the ancient astronomical past.
This will not be the first time that bits of asteroids have been brought to Earth. In 2010 Hayabusa, a Japanese spacecraft, visited an asteroid called Itokawa but returned with less than a milligram of it. Its successor, Hayabusa2, was able to procure five grams of rock from an asteroid named Ryugu in 2020.
OSIRIS-REx’s dig did not go quite according to plan. Some of the excavated material is thought to have jammed its digger, allowing some of the sample to fall back out. But NASA is confident that the mission has exceeded its minimum target of 60 grams.
Compared with previous missions, that will be a bounty. Researchers are interested in Bennu in particular for two reasons. One is that it appears to be rich in carbon, the element whose complicated chemistry underlies all life on Earth.
When scientists analysed Ryugu, the carbon-rich asteroid explored by Hayabusa2, they found a smorgasbord of organic compounds (that is, those containing carbon), including several different amino acids, the chemical building blocks of proteins. Examining OSIRIS-REx’s cargo should allow scientists to cross-check those results. Bennu also contains traces of another vital ingredient of life: water.
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