Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – A NASA spacecraft has converted more than 200 million miles of planetary samples into capsules to return to Earth, after losing some of its precious loot, scientists said Thursday.
The flight controller took significant action after parts of the debris collected last week entered space.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft collected blankets and other pieces of the planet on October 20, briefly touched the surface with its robotic arm and sucked whatever was there. So much was collected – a rock worth about an hundred grams fell into the container and opened, allowing some of the specimens to survive.
All that’s left is Benu’s village by March. Will not depart when the planet and the earth are properly aligned. It will be 2023 – seven years after Osiris-Rex made a noise at Cape Canaveral before the sample arrived.
This is the first U.S. mission to go after eclipse samples. Japan has done it twice on other space rocks and expects its latest batch to arrive in December.
Carbon-rich, solar-powered Benu is believed to have been placed under construction to secure the solar system. Scientists say that survivors can help explain how the planets in our solar system formed billions of years ago and how life came to be on Earth. Samples can also help improve our problems, he said, if a doomsday rock is on our way.
Benu – a black, round rock larger than New York’s Empire State Building – could be dangerously close to Earth by the end of the next decade. The difficulties of the strike are 1-in-2,700. The good news is that when packing the punch, it won’t wipe out the planet.
___
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Department of Science Education at the Howard Higgs Medical Institute. AP is solely responsible for all content.
