American Military News October 21, 2020 Lee Roop - Alabama Media Group
A NASA probe touched a rocky, dusty asteroid 200 million miles from Earth today and collected samples that could date to the formation of the universe itself. It was a big success for the space agency in what is being called “one of the most ambitious space missions ever attempted.â€
If the OSIRIS-REx probe can complete its remaining stay in the vicinity of the asteroid Bennu and return the samples home to Earth on schedule in 2023, scientists expect to learn about the early Solar System and perhaps clues about the origin of life on Earth. Asteroids circle the Sun just as the Earth does, and some scientists speculate asteroid fragments called meteorites may even have delivered “life-forming compounds†to our home planet.
All of that and more was justification for the mission and the source of hope for what it might produce, but Tuesday was a day for NASA and the mission team to celebrate in COVID-19 masks something big and never done before. Celebrating with the operations team was NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which manages NASA’s New Frontiers Program of missions like OSIRIS-REx with medium price tags and high-science-return possibilities.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/10/nasa-tags-asteroid-200-million-miles-away-grabs-samples/
