Material from the asteroid Bennu will go to the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian said.
The Smithsonian said this week that its National Museum of Natural History expects to get some of the celestial material that a NASA spacecraft brought back Sunday from an asteroid about 200 million miles from Earth.The material, which dates to the birth of the solar system, was dropped off by parachute in the Utah desert by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft three years after the probe retrieved it from the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft then moved on to investigate another asteroid.
The Smithsonian said the Natural History museum, on the Mall in Washington, expects to receive two samples of the Bennu material this fall.The first will go to the museum’s Our Unique Planet research initiative “which seeks to answer fundamental questions about the origins of life, the ocean, and the continents on Earth,” museum spokesman Ryan Lavery said in an email.The second will go on exhibit in the museum’s Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, he said.
On the evening of Oct. 20, 2020, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft closed in on the asteroid, which is about the size of a big city skyscraper. As it approached, the craft’s robotic arm impacted the surface, stirred up loose debris and collected some, NASA said.How much is in the sample is not known. Some spilled during the maneuver, but mission leaders believe they have about 8.8 ounces.Bennu is about 4.5 billion years old and a tantalizing relic from the birth of the solar system.
The sample was taken to a special laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, experts will take apart the canister holding the material, remove it, inventory it and weigh it.“The sample will be divided out to more than 200 scientists around the world and a percentage will be saved for future generations to study,” NASA said on the platform, X, formerly known as Twitter.
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