[ad_1]
Scientists are currently examining snagged, bagged and tagged fragments from asteroid Bennu, the cosmic parent ore provided by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer mission. I am.
The seven-year voyage, known by the astronomical acronym “OSIRIS-REx,” brought back supplies via sample return vessels, but came to a complete halt on September 24, 2023, at the Pentagon’s Utah location. parachuted into a remote area. Scope of testing and training. These far-flung specimens are thought to contain remnants of the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.
Space.com is currently working on extracting what these dark asteroid particles are illuminating and sorting out how these materials exported from Bennu came to be. We interviewed scientists. I would also like to know what insights they have into the origins of worlds in our solar system, including Earth.
Related: OSIRIS-REx team finds NASA’s first asteroid sample is rich in carbon and water
pristine reservoir
The site is the Kuiper Arizona Astronomical Materials Analysis Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Researchers there are using instruments to drill down to the atomic scale to understand what the OSIRIS-REx collection is telling us.
First, scientists at the University of Arizona received a 200 milligram sample (approximately 7000ths of an ounce) of the asteroid Bennu for analysis.
“There are more than 1,000 particles larger than 0.5 millimeters, 28 particles larger than 1 centimeter, and the largest particle is 3.5 centimeters,” said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. . “It’s a wonderful collection full of really big stones.”
Bennu samples contain large amounts of water trapped in minerals such as clay, and are also rich in carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous. The OSIRIS-REx sample is the largest intact deposit of such material on Earth.
“We’re going to be busy for a long time,” Lauretta told Space.com. “This is a huge sample for us,” he said, adding that Bennu’s specimens are also currently being studied around the world.
unique and different
Details of what has been discovered will be presented next month at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. Lauretta said more than 70 of his summaries of scientific results have been submitted to this prestigious conference. “From March, everything will be released globally, so the team is working hard on that,” he said.
One of the early findings was that the asteroid material under examination “looks isotopically different from the rest of our meteorite collection, which is interesting,” Lauretta said. “There’s a lot of material out there that we’ll never have access to if we rely solely on meteorites,” Lauretta added.
Most meteorites that survive a violent fall into Earth’s atmosphere and are recovered are asteroid fragments. However, identifying the space rock from which they originated is not easy.
phosphate crust
Lauretta said the OSIRIS-REx sample has a phosphate shell that has never been seen before in a meteorite. These high concentrations of phosphates have been detected in ocean worlds beyond Earth, he said.
For example, Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains much higher levels of phosphate, a key building block for life, than Earth’s oceans.
“Asteroid Bennu could be a fragment of an ancient oceanic world. It’s still very speculative. But it’s the best clue I have right now to explain the origin of its material. ” said Lauretta.
connect the dots
Unraveling the history of asteroid Bennu is a surreal task, said Thomas Zega, a professor at the university’s Lunar and Planetary Institute and scientific director of the university’s Kuiper Arizona Institute for Astronomical Materials Analysis. he said.
Zega points to the decades since the Osiris-Rex mission ended, from the proposal taking shape to the extreme study of asteroid samples in the laboratory.
“Honestly, there’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t feel really lucky to be able to do this for a living,” Zega told Space.com. “I pinch myself. It’s a blessing.”
By any definition, the OSIRIS-REx mission was an incredible success, Zega added. “And it’s pretty amazing that we can now measure our samples using the most sophisticated analytical tools on the planet.”
Missions like OSIRIS-REx, apart from teaching scientists about Bennu’s origins, will also help connect the dots between other meteorites in collections on Earth and the asteroids from which they most likely originate. It’s really helpful,” Zega said. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. ”
quick look
Zega was part of the “Quick Look” team that opened the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule after it was delivered to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Experts from the curation team discovered that fine-grained dust from sampling operations on Bennu was deposited on the outside of the returned avionics deck and touch-and-go sample collection mechanism (TAGSAM). was. The end of the OSIRIS-REx robotic arm that captured most of Bennu’s debris.
One aspect of Zega and Bennu’s surreal encounter is that they depart from Texas and return to Arizona with a small portion of a pre-arranged sample from the asteroid.
As it turns out, Zega’s express mission is a result of the University of Arizona, home of nearly 20 years of research to move Osiris-Rex from bidding to suborbital entry into asteroid material.
cover of darkness
“There was no way it was going to be in checked luggage. It was in my backpack that I brought on the plane. It was a small amount of material, sealed in a bag, and the bag itself was also filled with nitrogen. It was sealed in a sealed vial. That protected everything,” Zega recalled.
Landing in Tucson at night, the first thing Zega did was pack the samples into a dry nitrogen box in a university lab for protection and preservation.
“Then I went home, had dinner, and went to bed,” Zega said.
Zega joked that everything was shrouded in darkness. “No one was the wiser that someone had just brought back the first sample from NASA’s first asteroid sample return to Tucson,” he said.
stay tuned
Last month, on January 10, the head of OSIRIS-REx TAGSAM, packed with Bennuvit, was completely opened by NASA curators. That last step was slow to come to fruition due to some awkward fasteners that prevented visual confirmation of the asteroid’s total collectibles.
Now on Tap will publish a catalog of all Bennu samples later this year, allowing scientists and institutions around the world to submit requests to scrutinize the spacecraft’s Bennu bites.
Meanwhile, Lauretta and Zega are busy identifying Bennu specimens with their colleagues.
The team of university students and faculty utilizes a wide range of capabilities, from light and electron microscopes to newly acquired tools.
The powerful nanoSIMS instrument is now in operation, providing surprising observations of isotopes (different variations of atoms) to help interpret how each specific component of the Bennu sample originated.
“A lot of great things are going to happen over the next few months,” Lauretta said. “Then please look forward to it.”
[ad_2]
Source link
