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- A long time ago...
[dramatic fanfare]
No, not in a galaxy far, far away,
but here in our own Milky Way galaxy,
and even closer to home right here in our solar system,
there's an asteroid named Bennu
that's close enough to Earth to visit.
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We learned that there are thousands of asteroids
in our solar system,
some that can be classified as Near-Earth Objects.
So NASA planned a close encounter
with one of those objects.
Let's find out more about the mission.
- The OSIRIS-REx mission
is NASA's first asteroid sample return mission.
The mission launched from Florida,
spent a couple years traveling
to meet up with the orbit of Asteroid Bennu.
We get to the asteroid and we map it.
We want to learn everything we can
to really pick out the best sampling spot.
Once we've got a spot,
we then drop down to the asteroid.
We've got a long arm,
basically looks like a Pogo stick
with a filter on the end.
And we come down onto the asteroid
and just basically slowly bounce off the surface.
At that moment, we fire nitrogen gas
which fluidizes the regolith
and gets it trapped into our round filter.
And then that filter is stowed
inside the sample return capsule,
where it's kept safe.
So this is a pristine sample of an asteroid,
something that we don't currently have
in our meteorite collection.
So this is really exciting.
We get the sample stowed and sealed
in the sample return capsule.
And then we come home, which takes about two years.
And we ultimately release the SRC.
It survives a fiery entry through Earth's atmosphere
and lands in the Utah desert,
where it will be collected and analyzed
by scientists around the world.
- Okay, time for a close-up.
NASA grabs a piece of an asteroid,
and sends it back to Earth for scientists to study.
But what could they possibly learn from an asteroid?
- So one of the great things about Asteroid Bennu
is it's a primitive asteroid.
And as such, because it's so old and ancient,
it's really a frozen time capsule
from the earliest stages of the solar system.
So we're hoping to learn
by the analysis of samples from Bennu
how the solar system formed,
how the planets formed,
how asteroids themselves formed,
and the timing, solar system chronology,
the events that led to the formation
of our solar system as we know it today.
- Talk about an out-of-this-world encounter.
With so many asteroids to choose from,
why did NASA pick Bennu?
- So there are several reasons
why NASA chose Asteroid Bennu
as the target for
its first asteroid sample return mission.
The first is it has an orbit
that's very similar to the Earth's,
so it's easy to get to.
The second reason is it's large enough
so it's about 500 meters,
where it's not spinning very fast.
So the smaller asteroids,
those less than about 140 meters,
spin really fast and they're hard to sample.
So Bennu, although it's spinning,
it's not a fast rotator.
And then the third reason is
it's a dark, carbon-rich asteroid.
So we think, with Bennu, we're really gonna learn about
not only early solar system formation,
but also the potential origin
of the building blocks of life.
So this is really an exciting time
for astrobiology and asteroid science in general.
- The same from Bennu will be studied by scientists
for years to come, making
OSIRIS-REx's seven-year mission worth the wait.
Who knows, maybe you'll get a chance
to study it yourself.
For "Real World," I'm Mishay.
See you next time.
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