Why is the dust from this asteroid so special to NASA?

The day after the capsule returns to Earth Osiris RexOsiris RexSamples fromasteroidasteroid Bennu was transferred to the Osiris-Rex mission preservation laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Texas, where NASA keeps them in a specially designed clean room.

On October 11, NASA will hold a press conference to display the sample from the asteroid Bennu. In the meantime, information on the nature of the extracted Bennu dust should be provided throughout the cylinder containing the samples.

Reconstruct the history of Bennu’s formation and better understand the history of the solar system

As Patrick Michel, Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research at the Côte d’Azur Observatory and co-investigator of the Osiris-Rex mission, explains: Based on images of the sample, it is expected that at least 250 grams of material will be recovered from the asteroid; It’s a historic amount because we’ve never come back with this much extraterrestrial material since the Apollo missions “.

Samples covering a very wide time period

Analysis of this material from Bennu” It will give us an insight into our earliest history Solar systemSolar systemEven before the planets formed “To understand this optimism, you have to know that Benno” It was not chosen randomly “. and he ” A primitive and carbonaceous object, even if its history is complex, its formation is presumed to have preserved the memory of the object’s initial formation. materialmaterial It existed when the solar system was formed and the planets were formed from itS. Analysis of its materials aims to help us better understand How the solar system was formed, how the planets were born, and how life appeared on Earth “.

This knowledge will be more precise and accurate.” We know the geological context in which samples were extracted from Bennu, without biasAtmosphereAtmosphere The floor can be contaminated with them as is the case, for example, with MeteoritesMeteorites Which we can recover on Earth, even if it also provides us with very valuable information “.

Better understanding of the origin of life on Earth

Knowing that the asteroid Bennu contains organic materials and MetalsMetals moist, That is, those who have been in contact with water in the past “, scientists will also be able to strive to” Understand the role asteroids can play in…Appearance ofAppearance of For life on Earth “.

Finally, Patrick Michel hopes that Osiris-Rex can “ Recovering pre-solar grains, i.e. whose formation precedes the formation of the solar system, can therefore tell us about the environment in which the solar system formed, about 4.5 billion years ago. “.

100 milligrams of the substance were donated to France

Within a few weeks, scientists from the mission’s partner countries will participate in the preliminary analysis of a portion of this material from Bennu. Concretely, several laboratories in the United States will receive “a little Benno,” as will Japan (0.5% of the total), Canada (4% of the total), but also France. Professor Guy Lebourel, a professor at the University of Côte d’Azur at the Lagrange/CNRS Laboratory of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, is coordinating the analysis of the 100 milligrams that NASA gave to France. Two laboratories located in Nice, in cooperation with a laboratory located in Sophia-Antipolis and in Strasbourg, will analyze these material samples. Germany will also contribute to these analyses. Then, by the end of 2024, there will be an international call for bids to redistribute it for subsequent analyzes open to the entire scientific community.

To understand NASA’s decision to involve France in studying Bennu samples, even though we did not provide an instrument for the mission, you must know that we are at the forefront of research in the field of asteroids and in the analysis of extraterrestrial samples. In the case of Osiris Rex, it is a device located in the CRHEA laboratory in Sophia Antipolis based on cathodoluminescence that will be used by Guy Leporell, who has internationally recognized cosmological expertise, and the staff of this laboratory, allowing specific mineralogical analysis of this technique. You should also know that Patrick Michel is a world authority. The principal investigator for ESA’s Hera mission, he is also a co-investigator on several international missions, including the Japanese Hayabusa 1, Hayabusa 2, and MMX missions (Mars moons explorerPhobos sample return).

Note that a press conference on this subject is scheduled to be held in Nice at the beginning of November to present the samples allocated to France. We will come back to this.

Material for future generations

Not all Bennu materials will be distributed and studied in the coming years. NASA decided to preserve 70% of what was harvested for future generations. As was the case with samples taken from the Apollo missions, some of which were analyzed more than 40 years after their return to Earth in the 1970s, as Patrick Michel points out, they are “ Long-term investment, because future generations will have more sophisticated tools that allow them to participate in these adventures by making more discoveries “.