And out of this world scientific sample
seven years in the making
touchdown.
I repeat he has touchdown.
For the first time in U.S.
history, NASA
is returning an asteroid sample
from space.
CNN's Space and defense correspondent
Christine
Fisher has more on
this remarkable mission.
Well, Fred the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft left
earth back in 2016
Since then it has traveled
more than 4 billion miles
to the asteroid
Bennu and back
before finally
releasing a capsule
over the United States on Sunday.
Morning
and inside
this capsule
was about
half a pound worth of rocks and dust
and soil from the surface
of the asteroid itself.
And this is really the first time
that NASA has ever done
anything like this.
This capsule
entered the Earth's atmosphere, traveling
at about 27,000 miles per hour.
It hit temperatures
of about 5000 degrees Fahrenheit
before finally landing in the Utah desert
at just about 11 miles per hour.
Thanks to some pretty big parachutes
which help slowed the landing
from their recovery.
Crews that had been training for years
for this very moment,
swarmed the capsule.
They were able to check it out,
make sure it was still intact.
It was
they were able to make sure it was not
the battery was not leaking
any toxic fumes.
It was not
So from there,
they were able to safely transport it
to a clean room.
And from there,
it's going to be going on
to the Johnson Space Center
in Houston, Texas,
where it will be opened
and revealed to the public
in about two weeks.
And that is where scientists
are going to be spending
the next few years, really looking into
what exactly this sample has returned.
And this is a sample
from the asteroid Bennu.
It's a very ancient
asteroid from the beginning
of the time around.
When the solar system was formed.
And so scientists are hoping
to gain some insight into
if this is the kind of asteroid
that could have
perhaps seeded planet Earth
with the elements
that were needed for life,
things like water and carbon.
There was a belief
that it was these types of asteroid
that upon impacting
Earth, were able to seed it
with those elements,
give it the elements
that were needed to create life here.
So scientists are going to be
looking into that.
They're also going to be looking at
the planetary defense side of things,
because there is a very,
very small chance
that this asteroid
could hit Earth
in about 150 years from now.
It's the small chance,
but it is a chance.
And so
NASA wants to study
as much about it as possible.
What do you think about this?
I mean, this is this is cool stuff.
What kind of information do we think
we're going to get from this space rock?
Well, it's nothing less than perhaps
unlocking the key to
how life got started on this planet, Jim.
So big stuff.
You could imagine this planet
about 4 billion years ago
not being such a cushy place for life,
mostly magma.
But as it cooled off, a lot of scientists
believe these days
that it was bombarded by asteroids
that brought perhaps
the building blocks of life,
amino acids and carbon
and some of the ingredients
that make it all possible
for us to have this conversation
billions of years later.
What's interesting about asteroids
is that, you know,
we here on Earth
have gone through
all kinds of tectonic
and geologic activity.
In the meantime,
sort of covering up all the evidence
but asteroids.
It's like having those ingredients
in a deep freeze out there in space.
And if you could go and grab
some of those ingredients
and take a look,
which is what this mission did.
Maybe you'll solve some big questions.
And how did they do it?
I mean,
how did they get this rock off
of that asteroid?
If I could
just ask a basic question there.
I'm kind of amazing. Yeah. Well, this is
kind of cool.
The short answer is very carefully.
It's a seven year mission.
They flew to Bennu,
which is a near-Earth object,
which incidentally,
will fly
very close to Earth
in the coming years
and could potentially
put a bull's eye on us.
But that's another story.
But the trick with ANU is
it's only about 600 feet across,
so there's really no gravity there.
You can't really land
in any meaningful way there.
And so they did
what amounts to a pogo stick style
bonk on on that asteroid,
sucked up
some of these rocks
and went off on their way.
So the seven year mission
was only about a few seconds
of actually collecting the samples.
Interesting.
And it sounds like Bennu is a bad boy.
Is that the deal?
Miles, I mean,
we were just saying a few moments ago
that this thing might hit the Earth
in 100 or 200 years from now.
Are we going to have to get Bruce
Willis up Bennu in the next
space and all that? Well, is.
Yeah.
It's been
slated to fly
between the moon and Earth
in the next decade,
and depending on how that goes
in another 50 years, beyond that,
it could very well
have our number painted on it.
And we need to watch Bennu
very carefully.
It's one of those near-Earth objects.
Now, this is an asteroid
that won't cause a dinosaur
like extinction event, but it would.
It's about the size
of the Empire State Building
and would cause a huge
regional catastrophe.
So it's important
that NASA keep a close eye on Bennu,
and we have the technology.
Do we,
do we not, to potentially deal with that?
I suppose in 100 or 200 years, we damn
well better
have the technology to deal with it
if we got to do something
to that asteroid.
We've just experimented
with knocking these things off course
yeah.
Just about a year
ago, almost exactly a year ago,
this DART mission proved that we could,
you know, auger into an asteroid
and perturb its orbit.
Ever so slightly,
but just enough
if you do it
far enough in advance
to make a just a spectacular
light show
as opposed to a regional catastrophe.
Very interesting. So.
All right, Miles.
Well, we knew you were the perfect person
to go to on this.
We appreciate it very much.
Great to see, as always.
Thanks, Miles.
You're welcome, Jim.