Studying bits of asteroid Bennu can tell us about Earth's past—and potentially help future humans prepare for collisions.
But the scope of the OSIRIS-ReX mission stretches from the distant past into the relatively closer future. Nearly two decades ago, astronomers set out to not only get up close and personal with an ancient asteroid, but actually bring some home. And its scientific observations dip billions of years into the past. Samples from this more than 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid are likely to provide clues to the origin of life itself.
As the capsule nears Earth’s atmosphere, the recovery teams will board helicopters, using infrared imaging to track the capsule as it descends. Their goal is to swiftly arrive to where the capsule comes to rest, which will be within a 36-mile by 8.5-mile area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. The reason for the haste is to limit the chances that anything Earthly would contaminate the 8.8 ounces of pristine Bennu material.
“The sample comes back and is studied by the science team for two years,” Dworkin says. “Within six months, we produce a catalog of what we’ve observed based on how to describe the sample without damaging the sample using non-invasive techniques.”The science team has 12 major hypotheses and 54 sub-hypothesesThe first category is testing the observations that OSIRIS-REx made of Bennu while in space.
Some of the answers to questions across all four categories could come within months to a few years. But NASA is preparing for the long haul. Today’s scientists will only have immediate access to about a quarter of the sample. The rest will be held in cold storage for decades, on the assumption that later generations will have better tools and more knowledge to bring to bear.
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