On 24 September, NASA's OSIRIS-REX mission will finally arrive home, the culmination of its seven-year-long journey to asteroid Bennu and back. The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer, to give OSIRIS-REX its full title, will be carrying with it an estimated 250g of dust and pebbles which it carefully gathered from the asteroid's surface back in October 2020.
This precious cargo is being eagerly anticipated by planetary geologists around the globe, as it will be one of just a handful of pristine samples taken directly from another Solar System body. That may not be the case for long, though. Recent years have seen the number of such sample-return missions increase, heralding a new age for this particular field of space science.
These missions provide a hugely important piece in the puzzle of understanding our Solar System's history. Four and a half billion years after its creation, our Solar System is still littered with the remnants of planets that never came to be, in the form of comets and asteroids like Bennu. Astronomers have spent centuries staring at these distant objects, while more recently orbiters and lander missions have offered a closer look. To really understand these space rocks, however, requires the use of advanced equipment that can only be found in labs here on Earth.
Snippets of the Solar System
Denne historien er fra September 2023-utgaven av BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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Denne historien er fra September 2023-utgaven av BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Could We Find Aliens by Looking for Their Solar Panels?- Designed to reflect ultraviolet and infrared, the panels have a unique fingerprint
Researchers searching for life beyond Earth spend a lot of time thinking about what telltale signs might be detectable astronomically. Forms of unambiguous evidence for the presence of life on another world are known as biosignatures. By extension, techno signatures are indicators of activity by intelligent, civilisation-building life.
Antimatter- In our continuing series, Govert Schilling looks at antimatter, the strange counterpart to most of the matter filling our Universe
Particles and corresponding antiparticles are very much alike, except they have opposite electrical charges. For instance, the antiparticle of the electron - known as the positron - has the same tiny mass, but while electrons carry a negative electrical charge, positrons are positively charged.
Where Have All The Milky Way's Early Stars Gone?- Our Galaxy has a curious lack of pristine stars
The Big Bang produced a Universe filled almost exclusively with hydrogen and helium; all other elements - what astronomers call metals - were produced by stars, supernovae and everything that happens later. So if you can pick out a pristine star with no metals polluting it from among the billions in the Milky Way, then you are likely to have a star dating from our Galaxy's earliest days.
Inside The Sky At Night - Two years ago, exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford received some of the first data from the JWST
Two years ago, exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford received some of the first data from the JWST. In July's Sky at Night, we discovered what she's learned since then.
How to stack DSLR data in Siril
Easily combine multiple frames to boost detailin your astro photos
Lunar occultation of Saturn
You'll need to strike a balance on 21 August to capture the Moon covering the ringed planet
How to plot a variable star light curve
A rewarding project to chart stars that change brightness
Smartphone photography with a telescope
Mary Mcintyre explains how to get impressive night-sky images using your phone
Once-a-century solar storm is overdue
If a Carrington Event struck today it would be catastrophic, says Minna Palmroth
The new era of human spaceflight
There's been a step-change in crewed space missions since the dawn of the 21st century. Ben Evans charts its course and looks ahead to future horizons
