First analyzes of samples from the asteroid Bennu

The asteroid Bennu is about 500 meters in diameter, is diamond-shaped and is believed to be a pile of rubble, although it may have a much larger block in its core. It is a very dark pile of dust and rocks, much darker than what we see in the image they have shown.

NASA has shown the first findings of samples from the asteroid Bennu brought by the Osiris Rex mission, according to which NASA has literally found the basic components of life in the dark dust, specifically what is presented in the image.

It looks like powdered charcoal and some slightly larger fragments, and the "Carbon" thing is interesting because part of this powder is carbon and there are also water molecules that they have found, the samples contain water and carbon is what they have obtained from the first analysis, It is really an extremely basic analysis, because a more exhaustive analysis can last months or even years. According to NASA, these elements, the water and carbon molecules, reinforce the theory that these elements could reach Earth in the form of meteorites.

These fragments are about 4.5 billion years old and come from the era of the creation of the solar system.

Scientists rule out alterations in space samples exposed to vacuum, heat, cold, radiation, etc., because we have samples of asteroids in the form of meteorites and material also from comets, we have had this material for a long time and it has been analyzed and compared for a long time, but the problem with meteorites is that they suffer alteration when entering the atmosphere, which is a very violent entry. .

The rock that falls from space and ends up crashing against the ground of the Earth, where we collect it in the form of a meteorite, suffers from friction with the atmosphere, rises to enormous temperatures and can even explode and explosions can occur, also when If the meteorite has been “contaminated” for a long time, it may be contaminated with organic matter from the earth due to having remained for hundreds or thousands of years in the place where it crashed.

The Japanese have been doing it twice, NASA has done it now for the first time, but the Japanese are the ones at the forefront of this issue, fresh, original material was needed, material that was virgin from an asteroid , the ideal would be to take it from the interior of the asteroid because the outer layer suffers erosion from the solar wind, cosmic radiation and other effects, but that would imply digging deeply into the interior of the asteroid, and in this way any variables that degrade or change the material.

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