The asteroid is located approximately 120 million km from Earth
Last week, NASA engineers opened the lid of the TAGSAM capsule, in which samples of the asteroid Bennu were delivered to Earth, and now a high-quality photo showing soil samples has appeared on the website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States. The image is so good that you can touch the 4.5 billion year old rocks and dust.
Work on studying the samples will now begin. As previously stated by Lindsay Keller, a member of the OSIRIS-REx project team to deliver samples from Bennu, scientists plan to fully use microanalytical methods to conduct in-depth studies and even «literally disassemble the sample into atoms».
Asteroid Bennu, estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, may hold the key to the formation of the solar system.
Initially, scientists planned to obtain about 60 grams of regolith from the asteroid, but in reality there was more material: 70 grams of sample were collected from the structural elements of the TAGSAM capsule alone. Scientists also found evidence of carbon and water in material found outside TAGSAM.