NASA scientists plan to bake, cut and fire lasers at the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample to understand how our solar system formed.

On Sunday, Earth is expected to receive a very special package from space, if all goes according to plan.

After nearly three years, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is finally expected to deliver its largest-ever asteroid sample to the Utah desert at about 10:55 a.m. ET.

That’s right, an asteroid sample is heading towards Earth.This doesn’t happen every day. In fact, this has only been attempted twice before.
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OSIRIS-REx began orbiting the asteroid named Bennu in 2018. Then, in 2020, it got closer to a space rock as large as the height of the Empire State Building and picked up what scientists discovered. science estimates there’s enough dirt to fill a cup, per NPR.

If the payload lands safely Sunday morning as planned, teams of scientists and officials will begin a complex ballet to secure the valuable scientific data it carries.

Every step after landing is meticulously planned, but once scientists remove the sample from the holder, that’s when the fun begins.

Cooked, laser fired and cut in half.

The pieces of debris taken from the sample are expected to be shipped to more than 200 researchers, where “they will be cooked, they will be lasered, they will be cut in half,” said Noah Petro, a scientist planet at NASA Petro said scientists plan to analyze everything from the sample, even the inside and outside of the capsule that brought it back. In total, scientists in laboratories around the world aim to study the asteroid using 60 different analytical techniques, OSIRIS -REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said at a NASA press conference on Friday.

The goal is for scientists to “understand the processes that occurred before our solar system existed,” Lauretta said.

Lauretta said they estimate the sample contains about 250 grams of regolith, dusty material found on the surface of the asteroid. He said this was much higher than the promised minimum and was enough for learning.

Why Bennu?

Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said at the press conference that asteroids were found in different parts of the galaxy. Each section contains information about a different period in our galaxy’s history.

Bennu is an ideal candidate because it comes from what scientists say is one of the oldest parts, and could therefore give us insight into the formation of the solar system our heaven.

Whatever they discover when analyzing space dust, Petro is pretty sure they will be surprised. When he explained what he thought they would find, he got excited.

“We think we will find a chemical that seeded Earth “billions of years ago” with the ingredients that led to complex life on Earth,” he said.