Come September 24, and debris from an alien world will land on the earth. NASA’s asteroid hunting spacecraft OSIRIS-Rex – short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – will drop a capsule containing pristine asteroid material in the Utah desert. OSIRIS-Rex, which is currently winging its way towards the earth after a close encounter with Bennu, a near-earth asteroid (NEA), “is a cosmic detective,” in the words of Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the mission.
“Asteroids are like cosmic treasure troves, containing a mix of raw materials like metals, water, and even organic compounds,” Dr. Lauretta told this writer in an email. The astro-material brought back by OSIRIS-Rex, he added, “may provide scientists with valuable insights into how planets formed, what materials were present in the early Solar System, and even how life on the earth might have originated.”
