NASA announced on Thursday that two stubborn fasteners, initially impeding the release of invaluable material sampled from the asteroid Bennu, have finally been successfully opened after a months-long effort.
In the OSIRIS-REx mission, NASA had already collected about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust, having traveled nearly 4 billion miles to obtain this unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid.
However, in October, it was disclosed that some material remained inaccessible in a capsule within the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, a robotic arm with a storage container that collected the sample.
The sampler head was secured by 35 fasteners, with two proving challenging to open.
The delicate process of prying the mechanism loose required NASA to use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples, CNN reported.
As of Thursday afternoon, NASA reported that the sample material still trapped had not been unveiled. The space agency stated that a “few additional disassembly steps” are pending.
Once these steps are completed, the concealed cache can be photographed, extracted, and weighed, according to NASA.
An analysis of material harvested from Bennu last fall had already disclosed that the asteroid samples contained significant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals and carbon.
Scientists believe that the presence of water on asteroids supports the current theory of how water arrived on Earth billions of years ago.
Written by B.C. Begley
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B.C. Begley 