Borish johnson, Federal agency

New Delhi, March 26 The US space agency is set to receive historic asteroid sample delivery on September 24, becoming the first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu.After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver the asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants."Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room," said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in the state of Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the OSIRIS-REx science team around the world for analysis, and curate the rest for other scientists to study, now and in future generations, NASA said in a statement.Asteroids are the ancient materials left over from the original era of planet formation and may contain molecular precursors to life.Scientists have learned a great deal from studying asteroid fragments that have naturally reached the ground as meteorites. But to understand whether asteroids played a role in delivering these compounds to Earth's surface over 4 billion years ago, scientists need a pristine sample from space, free from terrestrial contaminants.Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

Borish JohnsonFOLLOW

Borish johnson, Latest News

Washington, April 2 NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has cored and stored the first sample for the mission's newest ... ...

New Delhi, March 31 In the wake of increasing solar storms, a team of international researchers including from ... ...

Washington, March 31 Indian-origin software and robotics engineer, Amit Kshatriya has been appointed as first head of NASA's ... ...

Washington, March 30 The Sun has emitted a strong solar flare severely affecting radio communications on Earth, according ... ...

Tokyo, March 29 Japanese lunar exploration company ispace has sent back the first image of the Moon from ... ...

New York, March 29 Space scientists have revealed a gamma-ray burst that occurs once in every 10,000 years ... ...

Moscow, March 28 An unmanned Russian spacecraft, which suffered a major coolant leak in December last year, has ... ...

New Delhi, March 26 The US space agency is set to receive historic asteroid sample delivery on September ... ...