Scientists have been greeted by the sight of jet black chunks of rock and soil from an asteroid after opening a capsule that returned from deep space a week ago.
Samples of an asteroid 300 million km from Earth arrived in Japan on Tuesday to applause and smiles, the climax of a six-year odyssey by a space probe pursuing the origins of life.
Japanese space officials said they are excited about the return of a capsule that landed safely in the Australian Outback on Sunday while carrying soil samples from a distant asteroid, and that they are eager to begin analyzing the “treasure” inside.
If all went well, the NASA spacecraft will return the samples from Bennu to Earth in 2023
An American spacecraft is about to attempt the audacious task of grabbing rock samples from an asteroid.
Nasa spacecraft makes final preparations to gather material from Bennu’s surface in October
Up to half of Earth’s ocean water may have come from impacts by asteroids
This Sept. 23, 2018 image captured by Rover-1B, and provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows the surface of asteroid Ryugu.
US spacecraft aims to return the largest trove of space dirt to Earth since NASA’s final Apollo mission in the 1970s.
NASA’s latest New Frontiers mission, OSIRIS-REx, will venture to a near-Earth asteroid to discover clues about the unique resources asteroids hold, processes that affect asteroids’ orbital paths and their potential for impacting Earth, and the origins of life in the solar system.
