The OSIRIS-REx mission returns to Earth in a few weeks. In 2016, NASA launched the mission toward the asteroid Bennu to collect samples to be studied on Earth. In 2020, the spacecraft successfully completed the collection. And now, seven years later, OSIRIS-REx is returning to Earth and is scheduled to arrive on September 24. To publicize the return, NASA has released the following trailer.
A key to unlocking the secrets of the solar system
As you can see in the trailer above, OSIRIS-REx made a historic landing on the asteroid Bennu as the rock hurtled through space at 63,000 mph. More than 200 million miles from Earth, the asteroid could be key to new discoveries about space and our own planet.
NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen explained that the OSIRIS-REx mission brings back a "primordial piece" of the solar system. "Many generations of researchers will be able to unlock its secrets," he stated on the agency's website.
Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, also stressed the importance of the primitive material from Bennu. According to her, the samples will help "shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps even how life began on Earth."
38 institutions around the world will receive samples from Bennu
In a text published in May on the NASA website, it was revealed that 233 scientists from around the world will receive part of the samples from the asteroid Bennu. Above you can see a map of the research institutions that should be the first to receive the material for research.
The text was published by Jason Dworkin, astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and project scientist for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. In the publication, the scientist noted that one of the most exciting things about the OSIRIS-REx mission "is that ¾ of the Bennu sample will be reserved for the global scientific community and for the future."
"Saving extraterrestrial samples for the future ensures that they can be analyzed by scientists who have not yet been born, using techniques that have not yet been invented, to answer questions that were unanswered when the samples were collected," Dworkin explained.
OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. The feat had previously been accomplished by two missions from Japan, in 2010 and 2020.
Asteroid Bennu may collide with Earth
Discovered in 1999, 101955 Benu is listed in the Sentinel Risk Table, a computer program created to perform automatic analysis of astronomical catalogs and identify asteroids that could collide with Earth in the future.
A recent study by researcher Andrea Milani managed to identify eight possible impacts of the 490-meter asteroid with our planet, which could occur between the years 2169 and 2199. However, the probability of the eight possible impacts does not exceed 0.07%. And scientists are still studying Bennu to determine the magnitude of its acceleration.
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