Laura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
On November 3, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History debuted a piece of the asteroid Bennu to the public for the first time. The sample was deposited on Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on September 24. The spacecraft did not land, but instead dropped a capsule containing about nine ounces of asteroid samples down to Earth. The spacecraft continued on to a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX.
Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold. The samples from this mission hold chemical clues to our solar system’s formation. Evidence of essential elements like carbon in the rocks outside of the main sample container have already been uncovered by NASA scientists. These early samples also contain some water-rich minerals. Scientists believe that similar water-containing asteroids bombarded Earth billions of years ago, which provided the water that eventually formed our planet’s first oceans.
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