By Jeremy Hsu, Innovation News Daily
The greatest asteroid threat known to Earth also may be the source of clues about how life began on our planet. That makes the space rock called 1999 RQ36 an irresistible target for NASA’s upcoming robotic mission to retrieve samples.
The $800 million mission, called OSIRIS-REx, aims to inject pure nitrogen into the asteroid and collect the dirt or gravel that gets stirred up. Anything collected by this “inverse vacuum cleaner” approach not only could give scientists a better idea about the odds of the asteroid striking Earth in 2170, currently put at 1-in-1,800, but might contain organic- and water-rich material similar to what possibly seeded early Earth with the ingredients for life.
Such ingredients would make asteroids a tempting pit stop for future missions headed out beyond the inner solar system, said Joe Nuth, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
