The material was first collected in space nearly three years ago from Bennu, an asteroid scientists discovered in 1999.
NASA is in the final stages of preparation to send its first sample of asteroid material collected in space down to Earth.
The material was collected by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) capsule from Bennu, an asteroid scientists first discovered in 1999. OSIRIS-Rex collected the material in October 2020 at a targeted spot on Bennu’s surface that NASA calls Nightingale.
“Scientists believe that the asteroid Bennu is representative of the solar system’s oldest materials formed in large, giant stars and supernova explosions,” Erin Morton of NASA’s Office of Communications said Friday. The Bennu sample is expected to reveal information about space that could “increase our understanding of how our solar system formed and how it’s evolved.
