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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA's spacecraft Osiris Rex has discovered water components on a nearby rocky skyscraper, likely to provide evidence of the origins of life on Earth, announced Monday. scientists.
The Osiris Rex, which flew 19 kilometers from Pino and about 2.25 million kilometers from the Earth, found traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules – part of the structure of the water and therefore a possibility of life – a part of the surface of a rocky asteroid.
The probe was launched in order to bring asteroid samples to Earth for study in 2016. The Pino asteroid, about 500 meters wide, revolves around the Sun pretty much at the same distance between Earth and Sun. Scientists fear that the asteroid Pino hit the Earth at the end of the 22nd century.
"We found minerals rich in water from the beginning of the solar system, just like the sample we went to get and bring to Earth," said Dante Loretta, a global scientist at the University of California. Arizona, and principal investigator of the mission, Osiris Rex.
Asteroids are part of the remnants of the solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe that the collision of asteroids and comets with the Earth at its very beginning could have led to organic compounds and water, giving the Earth the germ of life. The atomic analysis of samples of the asteroid Pino could provide essential evidence to support this hypothesis.
"When the vehicle will transport the samples to Earth in 2023, scientists will have a treasure of new information on the history and evolution of our solar system," said Amy Simon, scientist at Goddard Aviation Center, NASA, Maryland.
"We really want to understand the role these carbon-rich asteroids played in moving water to the ground at the beginning of its creation, making it habitable," said Loretta.
Osiris Rex will approach the Pino asteroid 1.9 km later this month to enter the asteroid 's gravity zone and analyze its topography. From there, the vehicle will gradually begin to reduce its orbit around the asteroid to just two meters from its surface, so that its robotic arm can extract a sample of the asteroid by July. 2020.
The asteroid then begins to return to Earth and a capsule carrying an asteroid will be launched to land in an awning in the Utah desert in September 2023. (Reuters)
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