مطوّر رصدينLittle did Smith scientist the modern-looking of his sample. It was the main, actually, value, box that built for huge part the university’s space exploration for almost five decades. was all part of the Apollo missions. “That blew my mind,” astonished he said.
This mission was significant because NASA is the first to land people on the moon – to collect samples from a celestial object and bring them back to Earth. The samples from the OSIRIS-REx mission are different from meteorites in that they have not gone through the Earth’s atmosphere and don’t experience the same level of terrestrial contamination. Smith is among the U.S. university researchers studying them; they and their colleagues worldwide hope to learn about our solar system’s history and the origins of life on Earth.
“Working with these Apollo samples opened up a huge window of time we haven’t been able to study, and it has just been an amazing, astronomically cool opportunity,” Smith said.
The research has implications for space exploration and travel, potentially providing key information for future human and robotic missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. For example, space agencies hope to use the moon as a platform for human operations and a launching pad for missions to other locations, and the samples could help refine that plan.
Analyzing these samples is one way that lunar and asteroid missions are interconnected and can help us understand both worlds, according to Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission and a professor at the University of Arizona, where the Planetary Laboratory is located.
“Our interactions with the lunar community have been strong and interesting, and we have been able to bring back the excitement of extraterrestrial materials from the moon to our own current sample collection,” Lauretta told ShareAmerica.
The sample from Bennu is particularly exciting because it’s predicted to be a different type of asteroid than the stony or metallic meteorites that reach Earth. “Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid, and we think these initial analyses are going to show that it’s something quite different from the meteorites we’ve seen,” Lucas Smith said.
“Understanding the diversity and distribution of the materials in our solar system is exciting because we know from observing other star systems that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all" model, Smith explained. "This variety is directly related to the diversity of planets and moons that we can observe.”
Overall, these samples could reveal information about the solar system dating back to its earliest days, Smith said. “This information is crucial to understanding where we all come from and understanding the environment in which the Earth formed,” he said.
For the OSIRIS-REx mission, the Bennu sample is just a beginning. The sample-return capsule and its precious contents will be added to the research the Apollo samples allowed and will build on discoveries he anticipates in the coming decades.
“We are at the forefront of a new wave of understanding in planetary science, and this sample is opening doors we’ve been knocking on for the past five decades. That’s what I find really exciting about being here at the University of Arizona,” Smith said.
