WASHINGTON, September 24 The OSIRIS-REx space probe dropped a capsule with soil from the asteroid Bennu, its landing is expected in Utah in a few hours , NASA said.
«OSIRIS-REx dropped a capsule containing a piece of the asteroid Bennu. It will zip through space for several hours, enter (Earth's) atmosphere over California, and land approximately 13 minutes later in Utah,» NASA said in its statement. account on social network X (formerly Twitter). The agency confirmed the start of the return of the capsule using data received from the ship.
The estimated time of entry of the capsule into the Earth's atmosphere is 10.42 US East Coast time (17.42 Moscow time), NASA hopes that soon after this it will land at the Pentagon test site near Salt Lake City. The search area will be 58 by 14 kilometers.
The OSIRIS-REx probe traveled to the asteroid Bennu in September 2016 and entered its orbit in December 2018. The next two years were spent remotely studying the asteroid and preparing for the soil sampling operation, which was successfully carried out in October 2020. The probe's return to Earth began in the spring of 2022. NASA calls the mission to Bennu pioneering and historic — soil from an asteroid will be delivered to Earth for the first time. According to the developers, the capsule should contain from 60 to 2100 grams of rock.
Asteroid Bennu, formerly known as 1999 RQ36, was discovered in 1999. Bennu is considered a near-Earth asteroid and comes close to our planet every six years: its average orbital distance from the Sun is about 168 million kilometers, for comparison, the average orbital distance of Earth to the Sun is about 150 million kilometers. Scientists believe Bennu may have broken off from a larger carbon-rich asteroid about two billion years ago. Scientists consider the place of its formation to be the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Due to the age of this cosmic body, experts believe that it may contain organic molecules similar to those that may have been involved in the formation of the Earth.