It’s a space mission that keeps its promises. The NASA probe, OSIRIX-REx, brought back to Earth last September samples taken in situ on the asteroid Bennu, 50 million kilometers from Earth. The American space agency was then faced with a “rich man’s problem”: the craft had brought back much more dust than expected, so much so that it had difficulty extracting it for analysis. This is now in the past and the first results confirm the hopes placed by the scientific community in this mission.
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A billion dollars for 121 grams of dust is not cheap. But since this dust dates from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, NASA has taken out the checkbook. Patrick Michel, research director of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Côte d’Azur Observatory and member of the scientific council of the OSIRIX-REx mission, explains that “ by collecting samples from such bodies, this allows us to have access to initial training. Finally, we go back in time. »
Go back in time to understand what conditions prevailed at the time of the formation of the Earth, but also to know how our planet, so close to the Sun, was able to accommodate so much liquid water. Asteroids could have had a role. The analysis of Bennu samples goes in this direction.
“ At the end of the formation of the Earth, there were many impacts, and the impacts may have brought water and organic matter which, by mixing, could give rise to living things. In Bennu, we have organic matter, we have water, this gives us good arguments to say that the scenarios which presided over this importance of an asteroid in the emergence of life are, in any case, not contradicted by what we are measuring », adds Patrick Michel.
To go further, it will be necessary to continue the study of the samples. Long-term work; 70% of the material reported is put aside for the benefit of future generations and their possible best analysis tools.