A little while ago, the samples taken from the asteroid Bennu brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space probe were collected by the American space agency’s crew in the area of their landing, at the Utah Test and Training Range. They will be transported to the Johnson Space Center, the first stage of a series of operations needed to process them while avoiding their contamination. In this study, NASA is collaborating with the Japanese space agency JAXA, which will receive some of the samples to compare them with those collected by its own Hayabusa 2 space probe on the asteroid Ryugu and returned to Earth in December 2020.
The OSIRIS-REx space probe departed the asteroid Bennu on May 10, 2021, after taking some samples. It’s equipped with various instruments that examined Bennu for almost two and a half years but the possibility of carrying out in-depth analyzes of soil and subsoil samples could offer much more information on an object that can be considered a sort of fossil dating back to the time of the solar system’s formation. Small samples could offer big advances in understanding the origins of the solar system and perhaps even the sources of water and organic materials that arrived on Earth soon after its formation.
The sealed capsule containing the samples was released by the OSIRIS-REx space probe into the Earth’s atmosphere from an altitude of approximately 102,000 kilometers and parachuted to the ground. This marks the end of this mission but also the beginning of the new OSIRIS-APEX mission where APEX stands for “APophis EXplorer” because the space probe will wait for the Earth flyby of asteroid 99942 Apophis.
Apophis is considered one of the potentially dangerous asteroids, so much so that years ago, calculations indicated some chances that it would hit the Earth in April 2029. Observations conducted over the following years made it possible to rule out this danger. Apophis’ minimum distance from Earth should be around 31,600 kilometers, which is still very limited, lower than the altitude of communications satellites.
The sample containers were used in the OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu but it will still be useful to study Apophis with the space probe’s instruments. It will enter Apophis’ orbit and use its thrusters to shift materials on its surface and gain access to those underneath.
