As it turns out, Bennu was indeed a suitable target for NASA’s first mission to return a sample from an asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx mission delivered a 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) chunk of Bennu to Earth late last month. NASA gave the world a first look at the sample during a live webcast (October 11), which also provided a summary of the first analyzes performed on extraterrestrial material.

According to mission team members, these very early scientific results are promising because they show that Bennu is rich in both water and carbon compounds.

“The OSIRIS-REx sample is the largest sample of carbon-rich asteroids ever returned to Earth and will help scientists explore the origins of life on our planet for generations to come,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement today. said.

“Almost everything we do at NASA is about answering questions about who we are and where we come from,” Nelson added. “NASA missions like OSIRIS-REx will improve our understanding of asteroids that could threaten Earth, while also giving us insight into what lies beyond. The sample has returned to Earth, but there’s still more to do; science we’ve never seen before.”

OSIRIS-REx was launched in September 2016 and arrived at Benn in December 2018. The probe spent the next 22 months examining the space rock from orbit and searching for a suitable place to sinter and sample it. This sampling took place in October 2020 and turned out to be a real drama: Bennu’s surface turned out to be surprisingly porous, and OSIRIS-REx dived deep into it.

But the probe was rewarded with so much material that the collection mechanism clogged, causing some asteroid particles and pebbles to evaporate into space. OSIRIS-REx still managed to keep most of the Bennu bits in its sample container, and the probe set off for Earth in May 2021.

The journey home ended on September 24, when the return OSIRIS-REx capsule touched down in the northern Utah desert. A day later, the sample arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, where it was processed, sorted, and stored.

This work has just begun. For example, mission team members still don’t know how much material OSIRIS-REx brought home. They think it’s about 8.8 ounces (250 grams) — much more than the 2.1 ounces (60 grams) needed for the mission — but that’s only a calculated estimate while the return capsule is still in space.

In the coming months and years, JSC will distribute parts of the Bennu sample to researchers around the world, who will study it in detail.

Their work will, among other things, identify carbon compounds that could shed light on how life arose here on Earth. (Many researchers believe that carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu seeded our planet with the building blocks of life through collisions long ago.)

Mission members say Bennu is a remnant of our solar system’s planet-forming period, so measuring the rock will help us understand the formation and evolution of our cosmic court on a larger scale.

“As we investigate ancient secrets hidden in the dust and rock of the asteroid Bennu, we are opening a time capsule that offers us a deep understanding of the origins of our solar system,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator. The University of Arizona also made the same statement.

“The diversity of carbon-rich material and the abundance of water-bearing clay minerals are just the tip of the cosmic iceberg,” he said. “These discoveries, made possible by years of collaboration and cutting-edge science, encourage us to embark on a journey to understand not only our celestial environment but also the potential for the emergence of life. With each revelation of Bennu, we move closer to unraveling the mysteries of our cosmic heritage.”

Meanwhile, the journey is not over yet for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Although the return capsule has now returned to Earth, the probe continues on its way to another asteroid called Apophis. OSIRIS-REx is planned to reach this space rock in 2029 and examine it closely as part of an expanded mission called OSIRIS-APEX.