Samples of Asteroid Bennu landed in the Utah desert on Sept. 24. In return for the Canadian Space Agency’s contribution to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, agency scientists will receive a portion of asteroid material collected by the mission.
According to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the samples of Asteroid Bennu successfully landed in the Utah desert on Sept. 24 at 10:52 a.m. Eastern Time. This was announced in a press release the same day. The CSA stated that the retrieved sample from asteroid Bennu could hold answers to fundamental questions about the solar system’s history and the origins of water and life on Earth.
The Canadian OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter (OLA) played a crucial role in the mission. The OLA, a remote sensing technology, was used to conduct a comprehensive scan and precise measurements of the asteroid’s surface, helping identify an optimal site for specimen collection.
Professor Mike Daly, the leader of the OSIRIS-REx OLA science team for the CSA, expressed excitement about the project. He mentioned that most information about asteroids comes from meteorites that fall to Earth, but studying the pristine sample collected from Bennu provides a unique opportunity for research.
The press release stated that almost 3 billion measurements were taken to create a model representation of Asteroid Bennu. Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne acknowledged Canada’s significant contribution to the mission’s success.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center will curate and distribute the sample to scientists and international collaborators. Canadian scientists will be actively involved in choosing the components of the Canadian sample, which is expected to reach the CSA headquarters no earlier than 2024, making Canada the fifth nation globally to acquire and curate a sample from space.
OSIRIS-REx was NASA’s third major planetary science mission, following the launches of New Horizons in 2006 and Juno in 2011. The mission aims to retrieve a sample from the near-Earth Asteroid Bennu and provide valuable insight into the formation of the early solar system, the origins of life, and potential asteroid threats to Earth.