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NASAscientists have finally disassemble the canister containing rocks snatch from a distant " potentially hazardous " asteroid , and now you could look inside .
The sample — roughly 4.3 ounce ( 120 gm ) of rocky distance rubble that the OSIRIS - REx spacecraft collected from theasteroid Bennu — is thought to hold some of the earliest precursors to life and is the first glob of a distance rock ever grab by a NASA mission .
A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside.
Afterlanding in the Utah deserton Sept. 24 , the OSIRIS - REx capsule was choose to NASA ’s Johnson Space Center in Houston , where scientists began working on its dismantlement . Yet two out of the condensation ’s 35 fasteners got stuck , mean that NASA engineers had to plan and manufacture two bespoke clamp - like tools from excoriation . Made from surgical sword , the tools were used to bump off the clutch andcrack spread the capsuleon Jan. 11 .
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OSIRIS - king mission scientists spentnearly two years searchingfor a landing site on Bennu ’s mountainous surface before the spacecraft touched down to compile the sample distribution . Upon making contact with the asteroid , OSIRIS - REx fired a burst of atomic number 7 from its Touch - and - Go Sample - Acquisition Mechanism to cling the landing and prevent the craft from sinking through the asteroid , as well as to catch the sample .
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The condensation ’s long - awaited content admit roughly 4.5 billion - twelvemonth - old rock candy from the earliest old age of thesolar system . They also contain some of the primordial element trust to have sparked life story on Earth .
Some of these building blocks — including U , one of the nucleobases forRNA — were recentlyfound on the asteroid Ryuguby the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft , which returned to Earth with its rock sampling in 2020 . OSIRIS - male monarch delegation scientists are hope to find other such biologic precursors inside the Bennu sample .
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