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NASA Brings Back Asteroid Dirt to Figure Out How We Got Here

Wednesday, September 27, 2023Wednesday, September 27, 2023By Macie Jones
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NASA Brings Back Asteroid Dirt to Figure Out How We Got Here

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned to Earth safely this Sunday and we can’t wait to learn what it brought back.

In real science news, the kind that actually furthers human knowledge, the OSIRIS-REx capsule returned to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx mission is an asteroid sample reclamation project conceived by NASA.

What Is OSIRIS-REx

OSIRIS-REx is a probe launched in 2016 with the mission of traveling to an asteroid, collecting a sample, and safely returning the sample for study. The mission took 7 years to complete, but it could be well worth the wait.

The probe landed safely in Utah and scientists were able to reclaim the probe with its sample still inside. NASA isn’t the first space agency to launch a reclamation mission successfully, but they have reclaimed the largest sample.

OSIRIS-REx brought back 250 grams of asteroid material. Before going all Prometheus and potentially contaminating the sample, NASA scientists pumped nitrogen into the probe so as not to contaminate it with Earth atmospheric elements.

Why?

Scientists have been pondering how the universe started and how our solar system formed for hundreds of years. Lots of science has been performed on meteorites but they don’t tell the whole story. Meteorites can originate anywhere in the solar system and may contain different elements. Furthermore, meteorites are manipulated by atmosphere when they fall back to Earth.

OSIRIS-REx harvested its sample from a specific asteroid named Bennu. Since we know where the asteroid resides we can make many more conclusions on its formation after the sample is studied.

In a world where billion dollar companies are creating nonsensical technology it’s comforting to know our government still participates in real science. It would be great if Meta, OpenAI, Google and others lent an assist to agencies like NASA. NASA launches rockets, tracks asteroids, and collects samples on a shoe string budget compared to these companies. Scientists at NASA are actually advancing human knowledge while Facebook and others are giving us celebrity AIs.

-MJ