NASA probe Osiris-Rex 'kisses' asteroid Bennu in historic missionAn artistic rendition of Osiris-Rex approaching the asteroid BennuWASHINGTON - After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex briefly touched down on asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday to collect rock and dust samples in a precision operation 200 million miles (330 million kilometers) from Earth. If Osiris-Rex successfully comes home in September 2023, it will have collected the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era. "We think we actually might be coming back with a baby picture of what the solar system was like, of what our chemistry was like, billions of years ago," NASA scientist Michelle Thaller said. - 'Rosetta stone' -Scientists are interested in analyzing the composition of the asteroids in the solar system because they are made of the same materials that formed the planets. Last year, Japan managed with its Hayabusa2 probe to collect some dust from another asteroid, Ryugu, and is now on its way home.

Source: Bangkok Post October 20, 2020 23:26 UTC