It’s professional: NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft snagged 121.6 grams of pristine area rocks when it bopped the asteroid Bennu 4 years in the past, greater than double the undertaking’s professional science function, the company showed February 15.
Introduced in 2016, OSIRIS-Rex is NASA’s first undertaking to gather samples from an asteroid and go back them to Earth so scientists can find out about our sun machine’s origins. After acting its grab-and-go process from the diamond-shaped Bennu, the spacecraft dropped its canister into our environment final 12 months (SN: 9/22/23). Engineers impulsively shuttled it off to a specifically designed pattern curation heart on the Johnson House Heart in Houston, the place it used to be positioned in a airtight glove field to forestall contamination by means of terrestrial subject matter.
Whilst researchers were ready to analyze some rocks and dirt already, weighing the whole pattern has been not on time by means of a pair caught screws that averted someone from getting access to all of the contents of the pill (SN: 10/11/23). Some suave workarounds in the end unlocked the whole pattern on January 10, and it’s going to now be allotted to scientists around the globe for find out about.
To be informed how engineers were given the canister open, in addition to what forms of science the pattern will train us, Science Information spoke with Harold Connolly, a geologist at Rowan College in Glassboro, N.J., who oversees research of the fabric from Bennu. The dialog has been edited for readability and brevity.
SN: In a while after retrieving the OSIRIS-Rex canister, you had been ready to gather some pattern, appropriate?
Connolly: There used to be loads of mud at the outdoor of the canister. That used to be the primary subject matter we were given, roughly 1 to at least one.1 grams or so of good mud debris.
SN: What forms of issues did you face sooner than it’s essential to totally open the principle pattern container?
Connolly: There’s a number of fasteners or screws preserving the container closed, roughly 32 of them. And two of them we couldn’t loosen sufficient with the apparatus we had. However there’s a mylar flap that strikes, which trapped the pattern in a container. The curation group on the Johnson House Heart found out it might simply push down the flap. With out disposing of the plate that used to be caught, the group may just get pattern out from throughout the TAGSAM [Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism] head by means of actually pushing down the mylar flap and scooping it out very gently. We were given 70 grams of pattern — so much.
However to get entry to the remainder of the pattern, they needed to create a brand new roughly ratchet wrench screwdriver. The former screwdriver used to be beginning to flex a bit bit, so that you could be breaking the screwdriver.
SN: Are you able to inform me anything else about what you’ve discovered from the pattern you might have thus far?
Connolly: It’s a serpentinite. It’s an altered rock the place the unique rocky subject matter has interacted with water, and that unique rocky subject matter should were wealthy in olivine and pyroxene and a few different commonplace rock-forming minerals on Earth, however modified and adjusted in a phenomenal approach. That could be a geologic puzzle to determine.
SN: What have we suspected concerning the historical past of Bennu that the pattern helps to verify?
Connolly: Oh, there’s so much.
Bennu itself is in a configuration that’s not what it at first used to be. As soon as upon a time, the items that changed into Bennu had been in a miles other object, almost certainly a heck of so much larger. We’re speaking quickly after the sun machine shaped, 4.5 billion years in the past.
When that object shaped, subject matter got here in combination, introduced ices with it — and now not simply water ice, however carbon monoxide and ammonia ice — this means that it needed to accrete someplace out previous what we name the snow line, out previous Mars within the outer sun machine. At that distance from the solar, temperatures are low sufficient for the ones ices to variety.
In the end, the inner of the bigger, unique object began to warmth up on account of radioactivity that’s naturally within the subject matter, and that started to soften the ice and turn into fluid. Fluid started to have interaction with the guardian physique to variety new minerals — like serpentinite — from the fabric that accreted.
We’ll be teasing out how a lot of it used to be altered, how a lot is relic from the pre-accretion level, how a lot is in reality from stars that died and injected mud into our sun machine.
SN: It seems like a dynamic and complex historical past.
Connolly: We’re excited by what took place: How did that unique guardian physique exchange? Used to be it impacted by means of every other physique and smashed aside to create the bigger boulders that finally got here in combination to variety Bennu? And the way lengthy has Bennu been on this present configuration? How a lot had it skilled interplay with the solar or with cosmic rays? All most of these processes we will tease out by means of examining teeny tiny little bits of pattern.
SN: Do now we have any solutions to any of those questions?
Connolly: Keep tuned.