NASA’s probe carrying dust from asteroid Bennu set to enter Earth’s orbit 

After a seven-year, seven-billion-km round trip to asteroid Bennu, NASA’s Osiris-Rex capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday (Sept 24).

The capsule is carrying precious dust from the asteroid, which scientists are eager to analyse to find whether or not life evolved on young Earth only after the bombardment of asteroids.

It will also help us find whether the water present on Bennu matches with that present on Earth, thus further solidifying the theory that the bombardment was necessary to provide volume for our oceans.

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"When we get the 250g (9oz) of asteroid Bennu back on Earth, we'll be looking at material that existed before our planet, maybe even some grains that existed before our Solar System," Prof Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator on the mission, was quoted as saying by BBC.

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"We're trying to piece together our beginnings. How did the Earth form and why is it a habitable world? Where did the oceans get their water; where did the air in our atmosphere come from; and most importantly, what is the source of the organic molecules that make up all life on Earth?," he said.

How the probe started?

The mission began in 2016 when NASA fired the Osiris-Rex capsule towards the asteroid. Almost four years after this, the probe scooped up a soil sample from Bennu in 2020.

Now, three years down the line, we are just hours away from getting our hands on the precious dust.

Dr Ashley King from London's Natural History Museum (NHM) is a part of the team tasked with conducting an initial analysis of the dust.

"Bringing back samples from an asteroid - we don't do that very often. So you want to do those first measurements, and you want to do them really well," he said, adding "It's incredibly exciting."

Origin of life

Prof Sara Russell of NHM was quoted by BBC as saying that the initial analyses on the soil sample will include “an inventory of all of the carbon-based molecules that it contains.”

"We know from looking at meteorites that asteroids are likely to contain a zoo of different organic molecules. But in meteorites, they're often very contaminated, and so this sample return gives us a chance to really find out what the pristine organic components of Bennu are," Russell added.

"We've actually never looked for the amino acids that are used in proteins in meteorites because of this contamination issue. So we think we're really going to advance our understanding of what we call the exogenous delivery hypothesis, the idea that these asteroids were the source of the building blocks of life," said another professor Lauretta.

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