“Big day in history”: a capsule with soil from the asteroid Bennu returned to Earth (4 photos + 2 videos)

NASA has already called the successful mission historic, since soil from an asteroid was delivered to Earth for the first time.





The OSIRIS-REx space probe dropped a capsule with soil of the asteroid Bennu, which successfully landed at the test site in US state of Utah, NASA reported.

"After a journey of nearly 3.9 billion miles (about 6.2 billion km) the OSIRIS-REx capsule with samples of the asteroid returned to Earth. Teams conduct an initial safety assessment. These are the first people came into contact with this equipment returning from the other side Solar system.

The primordial material of Bennu is stones and dust, collected from the surface of an asteroid in 2020, will reveal to generations scientists window into the time when the Sun and planets formed around 4.5 billion years ago,” writes the American space agency.

Moment of landing

It is estimated that the capsule contains from 250 to 2000 grams of material from the asteroid Bennu. Coming soon from the laboratory At the test site, the soil will be sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. And then NASA plans to send soil samples to universities and research organizations around the world.



Asteroid Bennu, formerly known as 1999 RQ36, opened in 1999. Scientists suggest that about two billion years it broke off from a larger asteroid that is rich in carbon (organic molecules that are similar to those that could take participation in the formation of the Earth). Presumable place of its formation - the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.





Photo of the OSIRIS-REx probe landing on the asteroid Bennu

Bennu is reported to have an average orbital distance of The distance of the Sun is 168 million km (for comparison: from the Earth to the Sun - 150 million km). At the same time, Bennu is considered one of the closest to Earth asteroids. Its diameter is only about 510 meters. At NASA they said that Bennu was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the smallest cosmic body in orbit of which a man-made object has been spacecraft.



Asteroid surface

The OSIRIS-REx probe was sent to the asteroid in September 2016. The device entered its orbit two years later, in 2018. Next two years, NASA specialists studied the cosmic body and prepared an operation to landing the probe and taking soil from its surface. This happened in October 2020. The probe's return to Earth began in the spring of 2022.

Visualization of the operation of the OSIRIS-REx device