{"id":174055,"date":"2023-10-12T15:25:06","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T20:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/nasas-first-asteroid-return-sample-is-a-goldmine-of-life-sustaining-materials"},"modified":"2023-10-12T15:25:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T20:25:06","slug":"nasas-first-asteroid-return-sample-is-a-goldmine-of-life-sustaining-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/nasas-first-asteroid-return-sample-is-a-goldmine-of-life-sustaining-materials","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O8R2hsoIgTc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The powdery material that NASA officials unveiled on Wednesday looked like asphalt or charcoal, but was easily worth more than its weight in diamonds. The fragments were from a world all their own\u2014pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/science\/osiris-rex-bennu-asteroid-sample-return-utah\/\">returned to Earth<\/a> for analysis by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The samples hold chemical clues to the formation of our solar system and the origin of life-supporting water on our planet.<\/p>\n<p>The clay and minerals from the 4.5 billion-year-old rock had been preserved in space\u2019s deep freeze since the dawn of the solar system. Last month, after a seven-year-long space mission, they parachuted to a desert in Utah, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/science\/osiris-rex-bennu-asteroid-sample-return-utah\/\">they were whisked away by helicopter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And now those pristine materials sit in an airtight vessel in a clean room at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center, where researchers like University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta are getting their first chance to study the sample up close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The powdery material that NASA officials unveiled on Wednesday looked like asphalt or charcoal, but was easily worth more than its weight in diamonds. The fragments were from a world all their own\u2014pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected and returned to Earth for analysis by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The samples hold chemical clues to the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}