The most recent touchdown take a look at was efficiently carried out by NASA, which is now in lower than a month able to receive a pattern of the asteroid Bennu, which was fashioned greater than 4.5 billion years in the past.
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The OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, launched in 2016, entered orbit round this star in 2018, collected a pattern and left in 2021 on its method to Earth.
The pattern is lastly scheduled to land on September 24, 2023.
On August 30, NASA scientists efficiently carried out a touchdown take a look at of a mannequin an identical to that of the capsule that was scheduled to return subsequent month, almost seven years after its launch.
“We’re simply weeks away from preserving a historic piece of our photo voltaic system on Earth,” NASA Deputy Administrator Nicola Fox mentioned in a press release. These supplies will assist us make clear the origins of our photo voltaic system 4.5 billion years in the past and even perhaps the origins of life.”
The pattern, weighing roughly 250 grams, will probably be transported to a sterilized non permanent room earlier than going to the Johnson Area Heart in Houston, the place will probably be analyzed intimately and distributed to numerous analysis teams world wide.
Canadian scientists will obtain a part of it, the Canadian Area Company introduced in a press launch.
The capsule is predicted to enter the environment round 10:42 a.m. on September twenty fourth.
To mark the event, NASA will current a stay broadcast of the occasion on its web site.