A NASA spacecraft returned a sample of an asteroid to Earth over the weekend.
“Bennu is set to probably come very close to Earth within the next 150 years,” said Dr. Heather Graham, NASA research physical scientist.
Dr. Graham is part of the team of NASA scientists that sent an unmanned spacecraft to asteroid Bennu, which is over 200 million miles away. Bennu is considered a near-earth asteroid. It passes by once every six years.
It spent two years surveying the surface to understand the composition and the geology, the topography of the surface of the asteroid.
Originally launched in 2016, the robotic collection spacecraft called Osiris-Rex, returned an asteroid sample to Earth over the weekend.
The sample touched down in a Utah desert.
“Picked a sampling site and sucked up a bunch of rocks and dust and brought it back to us,” explained Dr. Graham.
NASA scientists are eager to check out the samples from asteroid Bennu.
“Asteroids represent a huge part of the solar system. There are almost a million asteroids out there, and they're remnants of the early part of our solar system when the planets were forming,” said Dr. Graham.
Dr. Graham adds that they are studying the asteroid samples for planetary defense reasons as well.
“It's good that we have this complete survey of what the surface looks like in case we ever have to think about some sort of action that we'd need to protect our planet.”
Osiris-Rex wasn't around long.
It's already on its way to its next mission.
“It's continuing on to survey another asteroid Apophis. This is just one of many asteroid missions that we have going on this autumn in 2023,” said Dr. Graham.
Osiris-Rex is expected to reach Apophis in April of 2029.
