On September 27, 2023 the Osiris-rex spacecraft returned a sample from a 4.5 billion year old asteroid. After a quick study, space scientists are already excited about the results. The asteroid sample had “evidence of high-carbon content and water” NASA wrote in a report released earlier this week. 

What Does This Mean?

Finding high evidence of Carbon and Water means that the 4.5 Billion year old asteroid that Osiris-rex collected could have been related to Earth in some way. Data collected says that in Earth’s early years it would have had high carbon content to help form water. And that water helped create life on Earth. Astroid  Bennu is believed to be from another planet, we have never fingered out which one. But now scientists are questioning if the asteroid could be a large chunk of
Earth orbiting less than 2 million miles away. 

“The OSIRIS-REx sample is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever delivered to Earth and will help scientists investigate the origins of life on our own planet for generations to come,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Almost everything we do at NASA seeks to answer questions about who we are and where we come from. NASA missions like OSIRIS-REx will improve our understanding of asteroids that could threaten Earth while giving us a glimpse into what lies beyond. The sample has made it back to Earth, but there is still so much science to come – science like we’ve never seen before.”

Studying The Sample In The Future 

Even though we found some fantastic results from the sample, we still have much more to learn. The sample is like a 4.5 billion year old history book that we still have to read. NASA will ship some parts of the sample off to experts in other countries so they can research the sample trying to see if they can find something that researchers in the United States could have missed. One of the countries, Japan, has also done asteroid sample return missions. And most recently the Japanese Space Agency JAXA agreed to trade out one of their  asteroid samples for the Bennu sample. Which means that NASA will be able to have access to samples from another asteroid as well. 

A Update On Osiris-Rex

The remaining part of the Osiris-Rex mission, the spacecraft which is still operational in space, has recently sent course for its new target, a asteroid named Apophis. It should reach its target in 2029.