After an extremely long journey from asteroid Bennu and a complicated extraction from its canister , NASA is getting exciting data from its first ever sample collected from an asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx mission brought back a sample from the asteroid – which is believed likely to have originally formed in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter before drifting closer to Earth — and landed it in the Utah desert in 2023. A first look at the sample revealed some intriguing findings , and now further research is uncovering even more information about this piece of a distant solar system body.
Researchers have been carefully analyzing tiny particles of the 4.3 ounce sample, working out what it is composed of and, from that data, revealing information about the asteroid it came from. Studying the sample is not only important to understand the thousands of asteroids with orbits that come near to Earth — it can also help elucidate the early state of the solar system.
That's because many asteroids are pieces left over from when the planets formed, around 4.5 billion years ago. Studying them can show what the early building blocks of planets looked like and how planets formed when the solar system was brand new.
"The Bennu samples are tantalizingly beautiful extraterrestrial rocks," said Harold Connolly of Rowan University, New Jersey, OSIRIS-REx mission sample scientist. "Each week, analysis by the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team provides new and sometimes surprising findi.