NASA, the American space agency, shared exciting news about an ancient asteroid called Bennu. This asteroid is a whopping 4.5 billion years old, and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brought some of it back to Earth.
What’s fascinating is that the asteroid holds even more carbon and water than scientists expected. And here’s the exciting part: these findings hint that the ingredients for life on Earth might be hiding in these space rocks!
According to NASA, this sample from OSIRIS-REx is the largest amount of carbon-rich material ever brought back from an asteroid. NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, says this asteroid sample will be a treasure trove for scientists studying how life on our planet began.
The mission was meant to collect about 60 grams of asteroid material. But guess what? They ended up with more than 250 grams of pristine asteroid samples.
These precious samples will give scientists incredible insights into how our solar system came to be.
The spacecraft’s name is quite a mouthful – “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.” It made history on September 24, 2023, by being the first US mission to collect and bring back a piece of an asteroid.
Exciting times for space exploration, right?
