The asteroid Bennu may have life structures within the surface of its ‘rubble-pile’, and the body was once part of a much larger, water-covered world, scientists claim.
NASA’s OSIRIIRIS-Rex mission will collect samples of space rocks on Bennu on October 20 and bring scientists back to Earth to study in a lab.
As part of preparations for this mission, years since. Since then, six research papers have been published looking at the history and make-up of the nearest planet using data collected by OSIRIS-Rex, which has been orbiting space stones.
One of the papers, by Amy Simon of NASA G Goddard, found extensive evidence of carbon-bearing and organic matter on the surface of Bennu.
These substances were found in veins flowing through rocks covering the surface of the asteroid, and the free flowing water was to result in the formation that was on the large, long destructive celestial body that created Bennu.
According to the team behind the study, this is the first confirmation of these building blocks of life on a planet near Earth.
Bennu’s stones were found to have a bright vein of carbonate, formed by its interaction with water – probably its flowing freely over its parent body.
The discovery of atoms and the ancient free-flowing life of water gives credence to the theory that meteorites may have played the first building blocks of life on Earth – the atoms that eventually caused all life on the planet, including humanity.
Since its humble end with Bennu in late 2018, OSIRIS-Rex has conducted detailed orbital surveys and espionage of the space surface.
It is collecting data on the composition and formations of asteroids as well as identifying suitable locations for sample storage.
Teams of researchers from organizations around the world are flooded with data to better understand the mysterious loss of rolling rocks.
It is the Topsy-Turvy world that is part of the asteroid population that is believed by scientists to be responsible for Earth’s water and life.
Simon and NASA colleagues used infrared spectroscopy to show that carbon-bearing materials, such as organic molecules and carbonate minerals, are widespread in most surfaces of Bennu.
The asteroid Bennu may have life structures within the surface of its ‘rubble-pile’, and at one time the body was part of a vast, water-covered world, scientists claim.
These ancient building blocks of life are especially centered on individual stones, the team explained.
“The abundance of carbon-bearing material is a major scientific victory for the mission,” said Dante Lure Retta, chief investigator at OSIRIIRIS-Rex.
‘We are now hopeful that the central goal of the OCRIS-Rex mission – we will collect and return the sample with organic matter.’
According to NASA’s Goddard’s Hannah Kap plan, the asteroid may have come from the fact that water once flowed on its surface.
Some of the carbonates found in them are formed only by interaction with water and are three feet long and one inch thick on the bennu.
This is evidence that ‘water once flowed freely over the rocks’ and suggests that Bennu was once part of a larger parent body with a hydrothermal system.
“The flow of fluid on Bennu’s father’s body would have traveled thousands of millions of years,” the researchers wrote.
When that parent’s body was still young – in the early solar system – it still had enough heat to keep liquid water flowing in its soil and as it passed through the asteroid it deposited carbonate minerals in the fractures that passed through it.
Bennu was born from the debris of his parents’ body and some of these mineral veins have survived – as discovered by the NASA team.
That’s why we do spacecraft research, “says Kap Plan. ‘We didn’t expect to see these things, we can’t see them from Earth, and we needed to orbit the planet closer to see them.’
NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission created these images using the asteroid Bennu’s falsely colored red-green-blue (RGB) composites. Rocks on the surface come in two types, more less porous rocks potentially water-shaped and weaker porous rocks that were water free.
Daniela Delagistina and colleagues at the University of Arizona used different spectra of light to map Bennu’s surface and learned that it had undergone a complex evolution due to the space’s weather.
This includes exposure to cosmic rays and solar wind in some regions more than others – which exposed fresh material to the surface at different times.
The area of Bennu that will land the OSIRIS-Rex – the Nightingale Crater region – is made of fresher materials which means it will provide a cleaner look to the early solar system as the rocks are deeper than the inside of the asteroid – when Bennu first formed.
Researchers from around the world have been involved in the study of Benu’s data, including Dr. Ben Rozitis, a researcher at the Open University.
AS NASA launched OSIRIS-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security Regolith Explorer) near the asteroid Bennu in 2018 to study the budget up close and will take a sample from the rock on October 20, 2020.
He has analyzed temperature changes on the spatial stone and found that some boulders are weaker and more porous than others.
Strong rocks with carbonate veins are those – suggesting contact with water can lead to strong rocks due to the liquid zooming material in the pores of the stones.
Weak rocks are especially interesting to Earth scientists.
Dr Rozitis says these porous rocks are unlikely to penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere as they will heat up and explode.
This means that we have never seen rocks like this on the planet before – presenting a unique opportunity when it is returned to Earth by NASA.
Rositis told Mailline Naline that in addition to the unique opportunity to study rocks previously not found on Earth, the return mission will provide more details than can be achieved by remote robotic equipment.
‘This type of detail is not possible with remote observation, as the equipment required for this is too large to launch on a rocket.
‘From these analyzes we can learn that billion. What conditions existed when the solar system formed billions of years ago, how it evolved later, and even where the biological compounds that helped begin life.
Six papers have been published in the Journal of Science and Science Advances.
How would NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission to take samples from an asteroid work?
Osiris-Rex is the first U.S. mission designed to return a piece of the planet to Earth.
Scientists say ancient asteroids could hold the key to the origin of life.
It is believed to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, a remnant of the building blocks of the solar system.
The spacecraft was aboard the Atlas V rocket on September 8, 2016 at 19:05 EST.
After a careful survey of Bennu to characterize the planet and find the most promising specimens, Osiris-Rex will collect 2 to 70 ounces (about 60 to 2,000 grams) of surface material with its robotic arm and return the specimen to Earth by a single sample. Detachable capsule in 2023.
To obtain samples on the surface, the craft will rotate over a specific area and will be ‘sent down very slowly and gently’ at 4 inches (10 cm) per second.
The spacecraft will also carry a laser altimeter, a suite of cameras supplied by the University of Arizona, spectrometers and a lidar, similar to radar, using light instead of radio waves to measure distances.
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