NASA spacecraft takes rocks from 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid; This is what it reveals about the first signs of life. | Top Vip News

NASA scientists recently conducted a study on asteroid rocks that their spacecraft took from a “potentially dangerous” distant asteroid. The findings reveal that the spacecraft managed to capture a significant portion of the asteroid, almost more than double what was expected.

In 2023, the OSIRIS-REx capsule was brought to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston following its landing in the Utah desert on September 24. At the Center, researchers began work to disassemble the capsule, which was much more complicated than expected as two of the capsules got stuck with 35 fasteners. Therefore, NASA scientists were initially able to collect only about 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of the sample resting on the lid of the container.

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Progress toward the capsule was achieved only after numerous failed attempts to open it with specially designed and custom-tested tools. Once the scientists finally opened the last two latches on the lid, they recovered 1.81 ounces (51.2 grams) more of asteroid material from inside the container.

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The space agency’s 2016 mission, which launched in September, covered a distance of 320 million kilometers (200 million miles) to reach Bennu before returning to its home planet, Earth. NASA mission scientists spent about two years searching for the appropriate landing site on Bennu’s rugged surface to collect samples from the asteroid.

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The asteroid sample consisted of about 4.3 ounces (122 grams) of rocky space debris, nearly more than double what was expected.

OSIRIS-REx fired a burst of nitrogen from its Touch-and-Go sample acquisition mechanism upon making its first contact with the asteroid. This injection of nitrogen was intended to ensure that the spacecraft landed accurately, prevent it from plunging through the asteroid and thus retain the sample.

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Rock material may reveal first signs of life

The OSIRIS-REx mission is the first NASA spacecraft to recover rocky space material from the asteroid Bennu that could provide insight into the first signs necessary for life. The sample was found to contain rocks around 4.5 billion years old belonging to the early years of the solar system. Also found in the sample were specimens of primordial elements that are believed to have caused life on Earth.

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Additionally, in 2020, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft also found some of the building blocks of life on the asteroid Ryugu, including uracil, which is one of the nuclear bases of RNA. OSIRIS-REx mission researchers also hope to find other similar biological precursors within the Bennu sample.