Today, astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world collectively marvel at our mercury presence in the universe, especially as it drifts amidst large asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. June 30 marks Asteroid Day, an annual holiday to reflect on the possibility of a planet-destroying space rock hitting… Read More »
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Early analysis of a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu suggests the space rock has an unexpectedly water-rich past and may even have broken up from an ancient ocean world. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission collected a… Read More »
On September 24, 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped to Earth a capsule containing pure carbonaceous regolith collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. These samples were obtained after the probe made an impressive, seven-year round-trip journey across the solar system. Ever since these pieces of space rock arrived (about 120 grams of sample, to be exact),… Read More »
Scientists are currently examining bits and pieces fitted, packaged and labeled from asteroid Bennu, the cosmic mother lode delivered by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer mission. This seven-year journey, known in astronomical parlance as OSIRIS-REx, brought the goods home via a sample return box that came to a complete… Read More »
Samples of 4.5 billion-year-old asteroids that traveled millions of kilometers to reach Earth may reveal the origins of life on the planet. The teaspoon-sized sample taken from the asteroid Bennu is being examined by scientists at the Natural History Museum (NHM). The normally unobtrusive black dust-like sample could help shed light on some of the… Read More »