NASA's OSIRIS-Rex asteroid-sampling mission, tasked with finding hints about the origins of life on our planet, has returned to Earth from a seven-year journey to the other side of the solar system.
Because of the so-called Yarkovsky effect space rocks such as asteroids, over long periods of time, absorb and emit enough momentum-carrying light to change their orbits. Landing on Bennu's craggy face proved to be a great challenge for the mission scientists, who nudged OSIRIS-REx into a record-breaking orbit around the asteroid for 22 months before they found a safe landing space free of boulders. The researchers settled on a site they named Nightingale, which OSIRIS-REx touched down upon on Oct. 20, 2020.
"I sent him coordinate after coordinate," Lauretta added."We went through over 50 locations on the asteroid surface, and Brian and Claudia processed every one of them. And it played a critical role in sample site selection." Finding life in spaceThe next step is to find out what the Bennu samples are made of. Based on images, scientists think the sample contains a mix of dust and rock types; some of which are so fragile that they would never reach our planet as meteors, the mission scientists previously told Live Science.