After its OSIRIS-REx capsule returned to Earth amidst much fanfare late last month, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed America's first asteroid sample earlier today. The OSIRIS-REx mission had flown to the asteroid Bennu after its launch in 2016, and the sample return culminated the seven-year mission that saw a piece of the asteroid carefully packaged and delivered to Earth.
NASA's initial study of the asteroid rocks reveals that the sample contains some building blocks of life, namely water and carbon. A key part of NASA's investigation is to determine the role that Bennu or other extraterrestrial materials might have played in starting life on Earth, and according to NASA, the OSIRIS-REx samples have the highest abundance of carbon materials out of all extraterrestrial materials analyzed by Carnegie University.
NASA Discovers Carbon, Water In Samples Retrieved From Asteroid Bennu
As part of its OSIRIS-REx sample reveal, NASA held a press conference earlier today, which saw the agency's officials and analysts share several details about their discoveries. Not only did NASA receive some 'bonus' material from Bennu in the form of rocks lodged in the canister, but the sample analyzed lends credence to the fact that materials that enabled life to evolve on Earth might have originated from space. While NASA had aimed to collect 60 grams of rocks from Bennu, the agency recovered roughly 250 grams of material, according to preliminary estimates.
One NASA scientist studying the samples is Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx program. Dr. Lauretta explained that the analysis of Bennu rocks with electron microscopes revealed clay minerals with water locked inside their crystal structure. According to him, this structure provides a look at how water might have gotten to Earth to make it habitable.
The samples also contained sulfur, a critical mineral for planetary evolution and protein structure. Finally, iron oxide minerals that react to magnetic fields were also discovered, including those that could have played a role in the origin of life on Earth.
Dr. Daniel Glavin, a sample analyst for OSIRIS-REx, shared details about the carbon found on the asteroid rocks. According to him, the Carnegie Institution of Science analyzed the samples for carbon and discovered 4.7% carbon - the highest percentage that Carnegie discovered out of the 250 extraterrestrial samples it analyzed.
The rock grains were also analyzed by ultraviolet light, showing carbon present in the center of the grain, which was locked in a mineral grain. Organic globules around this carbon were visible as 'stars' within the grain structure. This investigation seeks to learn if extraterrestrial rocks might even have 'seeded' the Earth with prebiotic chemicals that aided the evolution of life.
Today's asteroid reveal comes after scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center have spent more than a week taking the capsule apart to access its contents. The samples have been analyzed by electron microscopes, chemical analysis, X-ray-based computed tomography and infrared light. These enable researchers to understand the composition of the rocks to investigate if they hold any clues for the origin of life on Earth.
The asteroid Bennu is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, which means it can provide important details about the start of life on Earth and its formation. NASA chose Bennu for the mission in 2005, and factors such as its distance from the Sun, its orbit and chances of the presence of carbon had influenced the decision.
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