The Dawn of a New Era: Eager Scientists and a Gleaming Lab Awaits
Key Highlights :
As the world awaits the return of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from its mission to the asteroid Bennu, scientists and researchers are eagerly preparing for the arrival of the precious cargo that could unlock the secrets of our solar system and our planet. On September 24, the spacecraft is expected to land in the Utah desert, carrying an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams of material from Bennu. The sample will then be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where a gleaming lab awaits with eager scientists ready to analyze the rock and dust in hopes of uncovering the building blocks of life.
The OSIRIS-REx mission, which was launched in 2016, is the first US mission to return a sample from an asteroid. The sample is expected to provide insight into the formation of the solar system and our own planet. Scientists are hopeful that the sample will contain uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA, which could lend weight to the theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet carrying fundamental elements.
Nicole Lunning, lead OSIRIS-REx sample curator, has the important job of carefully disassembling the return vessel and separating the contents, all while keeping the material pure and uncontaminated. "We don't expect there to be anything living but (rather) the building blocks of life," she told AFP. "That's really what motivated going to this type of asteroid, to understand what the precursors were that may have fostered life in our solar system and on Earth."
Eve Berger, a cosmochemist, is also eagerly awaiting the arrival of the sample. "These samples haven't hit the Earth. They haven't been exposed to our atmosphere. They haven't been exposed to really anything except harsh space for billions of years," she said. Berger believes that the Bennu sample could help us to determine whether what we really think is true, is true. It could also add to our knowledge of the ingredients that brought life to our world, and help us to extrapolate to other bodies where we might look or how we might interpret what we're seeing.
The OSIRIS-REx mission could be a major breakthrough in our understanding of the universe. Scientists are hopeful that the sample will bring back something that's never been seen before, and they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the spacecraft and its precious cargo. When the return vessel reaches the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the gleaming lab will be ready and the scientists will be eager to begin their work.
