A NASA mission is because of land within the US with “pristine” samples from an asteroid which scientists warned may someday hit Earth.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft gathered rocks and mud from the Bennu asteroid’s floor in 2020.
The spacecraft was launched in 2016 as a part of NASA’s first mission to gather samples from an asteroid.
It will land with the pattern within the Utah desert on Sunday.
NASA has mentioned the “pristine material from Bennu” will provide generations of scientists a window into the time when the solar and planets had been forming about 4.5 billion years in the past.
Bennu, which was found by NASA in 1999, is assumed to have been round throughout the first 10 million years of our photo voltaic system’s formation.
It has a diameter of round 490m (1,600ft), weighs 85.5 million tonnes, and is roofed in boulders of rock.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touched the floor of Bennu and picked up a pattern earlier than propelling off the asteroid in October 2020.
Could Bennu ever hit Earth?
Bennu passes close to Earth each six years and has had three shut encounters with the planet in 1999, 2005, and 2011, NASA has mentioned.
In 2021, scientists with the OSIRIS-REx staff mentioned the asteroid may presumably drift into the Earth’s orbit and hit the planet by September 2182.
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There is a 1 in 2,700, or 0.037% likelihood that Bennu may hit Earth in that yr, scientists mentioned.
The asteroid would launch 1,200 megatons of power, round 24 occasions the power of probably the most highly effective nuclear weapon ever constructed, if it hit the Earth, in accordance with IFLScience.
However, that is considerably lower than the six-mile huge asteroid which killed the dinosaurs – which scientists mentioned in 2019 was as highly effective as 10 billion atomic bombs.
Source: information.sky.com”