The first samples, which were brought to Earth by asteroids, were carried out by Japanese probes in 2010 and 2020.
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is all set to analyse a sample from the asteroid Bennu, and it could be key in understanding the formation of the solar system and our own planet, after it reaches Earth in late September. The asteroid is currently aboard OSIRIS-REx, a US space probe launched in 2016.
For those caught unaware, Bennu orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 105 million miles (168 million kilometres). For the study, scientists will separate pieces of the rock and dust and store the rest for future generations – a practice which has been followed since the Apollo missions to the Moon.
"We don't expect there to be anything living but (rather) the building blocks of life," Nicole Lunning, lead OSIRIS-Rex sample curator, informed AFP.
"That's really what motivated going to this type of asteroid, to understand what the precursors were that may have fostered life in our solar system and on Earth,” he added. Once the return vessel reaches the Texas "cleanroom," his job is to carefully disassemble it and separate the contents, while keeping everything pure and uncontaminated.
The return vessel is scheduled to land in the Utah desert on September 24, and it is carrying an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams of material. It was obtained via a high-risk operation in October 2020.
The first samples of asteroids that were brought to Earth by asteroids were carried out by Japanese probes in 2010 and 2020, and they were found out to contain uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA. It substantiated the longstanding theory that life on Earth might have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet.
Meanwhile, cosmochemist Eve Berger can't wait to get to work on the Bennu sample.
"These samples haven't hit the Earth. They haven't been exposed to our atmosphere. They haven't been exposed to really anything except harsh space for billions of years," she said. She said that it "will help us to determine whether what we really think is true, is true.”
