They are leftover pieces, as the solar system was forming and around the same time that life was forming on the early earth or other bodies, and so the same chemistry that was happening. Uh that could have influenced the urgent life is preserved on these relics of the solar system. You know you, can’t have uh life on a planet. Unless you have a biosphere, which means you have to have all the appropriate carbon oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen all kinds of elements. You need for life, and so, if those aren’t delivered then you’re not going to get anywhere. Obviously osiris rex is visiting uh one of these objects and it’s not just visiting any old asteroid. It’S uh visiting a really appropriate one for these questions about astrobiology, because it’s, a class of asteroid, which we believe is associated with type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites, which are amongst the most richest meteorites in terms of their carbon abundance and also their molecular complexity. So osiris rex can then attack these various issues in several ways. Of course one is. We have some instruments on board the spacecraft which will give us a global look at the asteroid. On october 20th of this year, osiris rex will attempt its first touch and go or tag event. This will be nasa’s first ever attempt to sample an asteroid in space with the hopes of returning it to earth. So for fun. Here is a lego version of the subject: spacecraft.
It has articulated solar arrays, a science that has return canister and this three meter long arm and the end of this is uh sort of like a old card air filter. But of course, uh bespoke design for this mission and for this asteroid to collect a sample of material and bring it back to earth. By touching the surface of the asteroid, collecting at least 60 grams as much kilograms of material go up measure the mass of the material and then stow it in the same return, canister bring it back to earth. So when we get these samples back we’re going to be interested in these aspects of the samples, what are their bulk elemental abundances and also what kinds of specific compounds are present and what can they tell us about how they formed and where they formed and when They formed, and in particular, could any of these molecules have played a role in helping get life started on the earth or you know any other place. One of the huge advantages of a sample return mission is that when you get the sample back to the earth, you’ve effectively added all the world’s analytical instruments to the payload of your spacecraft. Okay, so you can afford to do analyses of the return samples that would never happen on the spacecraft. Some of the instruments we’ll use to study the return samples are not just bigger than the spacecraft they’re bigger than the launch pad.
The spacecraft left from that will allow us to take a portion of the asteroid and really dig deep into what’s there and then because we have the global data from the in situ instruments. We can then put all that information in the context of the asteroid. As a whole, 60 grams of sample isn’t bounty – if you look at say the stardust mission, it’s, brought that maybe a milligram of material from comet float two that revolutionized our understanding of solar system dynamics and solar system formation. So 60 grams, which is our baseline, is a huge bounty for the chemistry in astrology. The most exciting aspect of this mission is that when we collect the sample, 75 of this is archived for future generation, so samples will be studied by people not yet born using techniques not yet invented. To answer questions not yet asked people who are in school now can make life choices to enable them to study the samples and ask questions that you just can’t, think of today or just don’t. Have the ability to look at home it’s just hard to overstate the power, the scientific power you get out of this? This is why missions like osiris rex are just so powerful is because mission gives you a legacy that just extends on into the future and never really ends visit asteroidmission.org to learn more about the osiris rex mission and watch the upcoming tag.HCrwF4oBCvk
