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Agence France-Presse

Nasa’s first mission to retrieve an asteroid sample and return it to US soil is expected to reach a perilous finale on Sunday with a descent into the Utah desert.
Scientists hope the material – possibly the most ever retrieved by such a mission – will provide humanity with a better understanding on the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.
The US space probe OSIRIS-REx, launched in 2016, scooped up the sample from an asteroid called Bennu almost three years ago.
Touchdown is scheduled for Sunday at around 9am local time, at a military testing site in the western state.

Some four hours earlier, about 108,000km (67,000 miles) away from Earth, the Osiris-Rex probe will release the capsule containing the sample.
The final descent lasts 13 minutes: the capsule enters the atmosphere at a speed of around 43,000km/h (27,000mph) and reaches a maximum temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius (5,000 Fahrenheit), Nasa said.
Asteroid samples suggest life on Earth seeded from space: Japan scientists
If all goes well, two successive parachutes will bring the capsule to a soft landing on the desert floor, where it will be retrieved by pre-positioned staff.
Hitting the target area of 650 sq km (250 square miles) is like “throwing a dart across the length of a basketball court and hitting the bullseye,” Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at Nasa, told a press conference last month.
The night before landing, controllers will have a final opportunity to abort if conditions are not correct. If so, the probe would then circle the Sun before its next attempt – in 2025.
“Sample return missions are hard. There’s a number of things that can go wrong,” said Sandra Freund, Lockheed Martin’s OSIRIS-REx programme manager.
Teams have meticulously prepared for the capsule’s return – even a “hard landing scenario” according to Freund – in order to preserve the asteroid material in its pristine form.
A final dress rehearsal took place in August, with a replica capsule dropped from a helicopter.
Once the capsule is on the ground, a team will check its condition before placing it in a net, which will be lifted by helicopter and taken to a temporary “clean room”.
The next day, the sample will be flown to a highly specialised laboratory at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

Scientists will open the capsule and separate pieces of the rock and dust over a period of days.
Some of the sample will be for studies now, with the rest stored away for future generations equipped with better technology – a practice first started during the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Nasa is expected to unveil its first results during a press conference on October 11.
Obtaining the sample involved a high-risk operation in October 2020: the probe came into contact with the asteroid for a few seconds, and a blast of compressed nitrogen was emitted to raise the dust sample which was then captured.
‘Planet killer’ asteroids detected after being hidden by sun’s brightness
Bennu had surprised scientists during sample collection: during the few seconds of contact with the surface, the probe’s arm had sunk into the soil, revealing a much lower density than expected.
However it allowed Nasa to take far more than the initial target of 60 grams – the agency thinks the sample could be up to some 250 grams of material.
That mass would be the “largest from beyond the orbit of the moon” Nasa programme executive Melissa Morris said.
The first samples brought to Earth by asteroids were carried out by Japanese probes in 2010 and 2020, with the latter found to contain uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA.

The finding lent weight to a longstanding theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet carrying fundamental elements.
Asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu, one of the asteroids studied by Japan, may look similar but “can be very, very different”, according to Morris.
Asteroids are interesting because they are composed of the original materials of the solar system.
The cupful of rocks may hold “clues we believe to some of the deepest questions that we asked ourselves as humanity,” said University of Arizona at Tucson’s Dante Lauretta, principal investigator on OSIRIS-REx.
Spaceship successfully deflected asteroid in test to save Earth: Nasa
The samples may represent the “seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet, leading to this incredible biosphere, biological evolution and to us being here today.”
Bennu, 500 metre in diameter, orbits the Sun and approaches Earth every six years.
There is a small chance (1 in 2,700) that it will collide with the Earth in 2182, which would have a catastrophic impact.
Nasa has studied ways to divert an asteroid’s trajectory, and a better understanding of Bennu’s composition could therefore prove useful.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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Science

Historic Nasa asteroid mission set for perilous return to Earth

Illustration depicts the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at  asteroid Bennu. On Sunday, the spacecraft will fly by Earth and drop off asteroid material. File photo: Nasa

The asteroid Bennu, as seen from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. File photo: Nasa

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touching the surface of asteroid Bennu in 2020. File photo: Nasa

An artist’s rendering depicting the spacecraft making contact with asteroid Bennu. File photo: Nasa

Life on Earth may have come from space, say Japan scientists studying samples from asteroid 300 million km away

Soil samples from the asteroid Ryugu are seen inside a container of the Hayabusa2’s re-entry capsule after it returned to Earth in 2020. Photo: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency via AP

Samples from the asteroid Ryugu are seen inside a container of the Hayabusa2’s re-entry capsule after it returned to Earth in 2020. Photo: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency via AP

Scientists analyse rock samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu in the “clean room” at Kyushu University in Japan. Photo: Kyushu University/Hokkaido University/JAMSTEC Handout via Reuters

A computer-generated image shows the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft above the asteroid Ryugu. Photo: ISAS/JAXA via AP

‘Planet killer’ asteroids detected after being hidden by sun’s brightness

The asteroids were found using a hi-tech instrument on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. Photo: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Sparks

Nasa says spaceship successfully deflected asteroid in test to save Earth

Nasa’s Dart spacecraft strikes target asteroid Dimorphos on September 26. Image: ASI/Nasa via AFP

Ancient eggshells show dinosaurs already dying out before asteroid strike, Chinese scientists say

An artist’s depiction shows Chinese scientists’ view of late Cretaceous oviraptorosaurs, hadrosaurs, and tyrannosaurs living in central China. Image: Chuang Zhao.

A dinosaur egg (Macroolithus yaotunensis). Photo: Wang Qiang  (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, China), Han Fei and Wen Chen (China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China)

News

World

United States & Canada

Nasa spacecraft will fly by Earth and drop off sample collected from asteroid
Material from asteroids can help explain how Earth – and life – came to be


A Nasa spacecraft will fly by Earth on Sunday and drop off what is expected to be at least a cupful of rubble it grabbed from the asteroid Bennu, closing out a seven-year quest.


Space

Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Historic Nasa asteroid mission set for perilous return to Earth

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Nasa spacecraft will fly by Earth and drop off sample collected from asteroid Material from asteroids can help explain how Earth – and life – came to be

Nasa spacecraft will fly by Earth and drop off sample collected from asteroid

Material from asteroids can help explain how Earth – and life – came to be