Inspenet, September 28, 2023.<\/p>\n\n
NASA announced Tuesday that the Osiris-Rex mission probe, which collected fragments of the asteroid Bennu, has revealed the presence of “black dust and debris” inside, although the sample has not yet been fully examined.<\/p>\n\n
After seven years since its launch, the probe made a successful landing on Sunday in the Utah desert, United States, in a high-risk maneuver.<\/p>\n\n
The sample, collected in 2020 from the asteroid Bennu, is estimated to contain around 250 grams of material, according to the US space agency.<\/p>\n\n
During that operation, the Agency faced an issue with the collection container lid initially failing to close, but the sample was eventually secured and transferred to the probe as planned.<\/p>\n\n
However, due to this inconvenience, scientists anticipated finding traces outside the collection container, inside the box where it was originally housed.<\/p>\n\n
On Tuesday, a first hatch was opened in a sealed chamber at the Johnson Space Center, located in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n\n
Immediately, NASA teams detected “black dust and debris,” as reported by the space agency, although it was not specified whether they were fragments of the asteroid<\/strong> .<\/p>\n\n This material will be analyzed and a “meticulous disassembly process” of the collection compartment will be carried out in order to access the main sample found inside, according to the space agency.<\/p>\n\n A press conference is scheduled for October 11 to “present the findings of the collection.”<\/p>\n\n Importantly, studying the composition of the asteroid Bennu will give scientists a deeper understanding of the formation of the Solar System and how Earth became a habitable place.<\/p>\n\n For their part, experts maintain that this celestial body, with a diameter of 500 meters, contains an abundance of carbon<\/a><\/strong> and houses water molecules trapped in minerals.<\/p>\n\n There is a low probability that Bennu will collide with Earth in 2182, since in 2022, NASA managed to modify the trajectory of an asteroid through a controlled collision.<\/p>\n\n