The capsule of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission that brings samples from the asteroid Bennu has landed on September 24 at the Uta training and testing range of the United States Department of Defense.
n is an asteroid that is about 490 meters in diameter. The closest approach with us would be 2,182, but the probability of impact that year is very small, 1 in 2,700, that is, there is a percentage of only 0.037%, and also at that time It is practically certain, if we do not return to a Middle Ages due to a nuclear war, that humanity will have a good planetary defense system to deflect asteroids of this type and even larger ones, as was demonstrated with NASA's Dar mission where An asteroid of about 160 meters in diameter was managed to deflect.
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This is the third time that it has been possible to bring virgin samples of an asteroid to Earth, the previous two were achievements of the Japanese who are already experts in the exploration of asteroids, the first time they achieved it with the hayabusa mission that brought us samples of the asteroid Itokawa in 2010 and the second was with the hayabusa 2 mission.
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The asteroids that impact the Earth bring a lot of information about the objects of the Cosmos, but not all, since they have three fundamental problems, the first is that they can be contaminated by terrestrial materials, the second is that the high temperatures and sometimes the The explosion that occurs when they enter the Earth's atmosphere alters the Original materials of the asteroid and the third problem is that this entry heat also destroys valuable molecules such as organic molecules or water molecules that the asteroid could carry, not all are destroyed, Since in the past organic molecules have been found in meteorites but we cannot know if those we have found are the normal amount that an asteroid carries or if they are just the remains left behind during re-entry.
Perhaps the asteroids are full of organic molecules And some of them may be completely unknown to science, in fact it is suspected that many of the organic molecules that ended up entering the recipe to form life here on Earth were not created in our planet but came inside meteorites, but to solve this enigma it is important to have original samples without alteration since asteroids keep remains of the creation of the solar system and also clues about the origin of life.
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