NASA’s OSIRIS-REx: First-ever asteroid sample to drop on Earth

Source: The post is based on the article “NASA’s OSIRIS-REx: First-ever asteroid sample to drop on Earth”  published in Indian Express on 25th September 2023

What is the News?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) is preparing for the final phase of the OSIRIS-REx mission as the spacecraft is set to drop a capsule containing samples from the asteroid Bennu on Earth.

What is the OSIRIS-REx Mission?

Source: Al Jazeera

OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer.The mission was launched by NASA in 2016.

Aim: To travel to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study.

Significance: It is the first U.S. mission to successfully collect a sample from an asteroid.

– Note: Japan is the only other country to bring back asteroid samples.It gathered samples of about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions.

What is Asteroid Bennu?

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Why is the OSIRIS-REx Mission important?

Samples like the one carried by the OSIRIS-REx mission are important because asteroids like Bennu can act as “time capsules” for the earliest history of our solar system. 

They can also preserve chemical signatures from a long time ago when the universe was a younger place.In fact, it is even possible that they contain samples of the ancient building blocks of life.