This NASA Spacecraft Could Unveil the Origins of Life

NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission is ready for its long-awaited touchdown on asteroid Bennu. What will its samples reveal?

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, was launched approximately 4 years ago in September 2016 with the goal of collecting samples from an asteroid. Specifically, a rare B-type asteroid. B-type asteroids are primitive, meaning they haven’t changed much since the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. And this could mean they contain carbon-based organic molecules similar to those that led to life on Earth.

The B-type asteroid OSIRIS-REx was launched at is called Bennu, formerly known as RQ36, and since December 2018, OSIRIS-REx has been surveying and orbiting Bennu, mapping the asteroid’s surface, tracking its spin, ad gaining experience flying close to a small body.

Find out more about the science OSIRIS-REx has been doing as it whizzes around Bennu and the mission's findings in this Elements.

#NASA #asteroid #OSIRIS #bennu #space #seeker #science #elements

Read More:
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Begins its Countdown to TAG
"In just a few weeks, the robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will descend to asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface, touch down for a few seconds and collect a sample of the asteroid’s rocks and dust – marking the first time NASA has grabbed pieces of an asteroid, which will be returned to Earth for study."

Mysterious asteroid activity complicates NASA’s sampling attempts
"The abundance of impact craters on Bennu’s ridgelike belly suggest the asteroid is up to a billion years old, more ancient than once thought."

Do asteroids hold the key to life on Earth?
"'The water and organics on Earth didn’t form with the planet, they came in later on asteroids,’ explains Harold Levison, a chief planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, US."

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[jakes.house.]

Wow I can't wait for that pristine piece of solar system

[diyeana]

No matter what it sends back, it's super exciting. Unless this is the beginning of a horror movie. I mean, we are talking about this in 2020.

[brettkeeler]

Wait...what??? Oh btw, this will likely destroy all life as we know it in the 22nd century. Be sure to like and subscribe!😱

[LuxxyOfficial]

how far out is the asteroid?
you said the sample is going to take 3 years to get here,
i would have assumed that the asteroid was not too far out from the moon.

[ben_hell]

Touch And Go? Are you saying that the game of tag is an acronym?

[dtown]

“Nonchalantly this meteor has a chance of hitting earth.”

[mohitdoshi]

Earth : Lets go and take samples from bennu.
Bennu: Lets go to earth and take it whole!

[bubediscuss]

BENNU: "aight y'all i'm ready to scoop this dirt up"
EARTH: "hold up we got a virus goin' round"
BENNU: "This is my problem how?"

[Lordazoid]

Why these click baite titles? Even in the best case scenario this will not give us an answer to the question where life comes from. It might give us some hints but this singular piece of research is will in no instance finalise the debate

[Purberus]

Imagine we figure out how to safely capture this meteor in an orbit around earth by it’s arrival date.

[TempleGuitars]

"Since the beginning of philosophy and science." The beginning of science was philosophy, there was no science before it, or at the beginning of it.

[ednelson]

Planet Earth is 149.6 million km from the Sun. We do one revolution per year. I am quite happy that someone can figure the orbit, distance and speed of the incoming object. Even saying that it might hit us in 20 years is a huge calculation. If the object arrives 20 . 5 years from now, we are 300 million KM away on the opposite side of the sun. Any debris, alters the course. Bravo someone !!!

[chandraroy]

Mate you haven’t told us where Bennu is

[Mrclingerful]

If your coming here after the 20th looks like they touched down and collected! Woohoo!

[ghorgyan]

Yes, it definitely can unveil the origin of life
if it knows what life is in its core, if you know
life from its core then you can unveil the secrets
of the universe

[long-timelistenerfirst-t-usyy]

_"... this meteor has a chance of hitting earth ..."_ *YES!* please _Please_ *PLEASE* yes 🤞🏼🙏🏼

[karthikgowda]

The mission sounds a bit like a plot from the movie "VENOM"

[subhajitmishra]

2020 would have been a great year in space exploration and other inovation fields if not for this fking Corona virua situation.

The way we were progressing we surely could hv set mind blowing records. Now every country will be much focused on it's gdp and other stffs.
😣😶

[wolfthorn]

Would be funny if the returned sample had a cigarette butt in it.

[Pssst.ByTheWay]

people hve mentioned the on screen reading. today i noticed too. never looking into the camera, always below and sweeping from side to side