Astrum Space - NASA Found a Strange Substance on Asteroid Bennu

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

This is an Astrum supercut about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. After studying the asteroid sample that was returned to Earth, scientists have made some shocking discoveries, including substances they’ve never seen in space before… What can Bennu teach us about how our solar system came to be, and even how life formed on Earth? To those returning and new to the channel: This video is a supercut of our best content about OSIRIS-REx and Bennu, plus new and updated discoveries from the mission. We’ve edited this into a new seamless video, remastered in 4K resolution, and re-recorded the older voiceover to match the quality of the recent episodes.▀▀▀▀▀▀Astrum's newsletter has launched! Want to know what's happening in space? Sign up here: ⁠https://astrumspace.kit.com⁠A huge thanks to our Patreons who help make these videos possible. Sign-up here: ⁠https://bit.ly/4aiJZNF

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And if we can uncover what lies within them, we can better understand our own origins. So it is no wonder that NASA has many missions tasked with imaging them. There have even been a few that have collected samples from the coma of comets. But as for a NASA mission that traveled to an asteroid, touched its very surface and endeavored to bring a sample back, there has only ever been one. Osiris Rex This little herd of mission was instrumental in advancing our understanding of a time before our planet. But its journey to and from the asteroid known as Benu was not all smooth sailing.

What did it do there? What were its mission goals? And what did this NASA mission like no other ultimately uncover on that tiny frozen world? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum, and together we will go through everything you could want to know about the Osiris Rex mission. Let's start from the beginning. Osiris Rex is part of the New Frontiers NASA program along with Juno and New Horizons, which means it's part of a high pedigree if you've been following those other missions.

It launched in September 2016 and arrived near Benu on the 3rd of December, 2018, where it began imaging the surface. But Osiris Rex is not just an imager. You see, unlike most robotic NASA missions that don't return to Earth, Osiris Rex is unique in that it is a sample return mission. The first time NASA would attempt this with an asteroid, although it should be noted that Japan's Jaxa program had done this before with the Hayabusa mission, and again with Hayabusa 2.

But why asteroids? Apart from the curiosity factor, is there anything that actually makes asteroids special? Well, asteroids are remnants of some of the oldest objects in our solar system. They were there when everything was in the process of forming around the sun. To this end, asteroids can tell us a lot about the formation of the solar system. They are the building blocks of planets and also potentially life. Asteroids could be the source of water on Earth and they mysteriously contain organic materials

like hydrocarbons and amino acids. Actual uncontaminated samples of asteroids will provide insights into this, enabling us to have a better understanding of the universe we live in. And, tempting though it is, we cannot simply study the asteroids that come to us. While there are a lot of meteorites that land on the surface of Earth and we have many, many samples,

these meteorites pass through our atmosphere, heating up to incredible temperatures which alters the delicate materials in the meteorite. Upon impact, they are also then exposed to the surface of the Earth, making it hard for scientists to distinguish what was there from before and after the impact. A sample directly from an asteroid, protected in a box from contamination which occurs during the re-entry process, can give a much greater insight into the nature of asteroids than anything we've observed before.

With this sample, scientists would be able to search for organic compounds like amino acids, hydrated materials like clays, and other substances that would otherwise be hard to detect. Benu is an extremely old asteroid. It is thought to have been around since the birth of the solar system, and as such is a treasure trove of information about the solar system, formation, and maybe even the origins of life. So NASA reached a decision. While missions have photographed asteroids before and have even collected star dust from

the tails of comets, this was to be the first time a NASA spacecraft would ever travel to an asteroid to physically collect a sample from its surface. So the stakes were high. goal was to collect a 60 gram sample of regalith and dust from Benu's surface. It would do that by entering Benu's orbit and slowly descending. It would be careful not to disturb or contaminate the asteroid's surface by using its thrusters, but would drift gently down, extending its long touch-and-go sample acquisition mechanism, or Tag Sam as it did so.

Then at the moment it touched the surface of the asteroid, it would release a burst of nitrogen gas from its arm, kicking up dust and materials, which would be captured in its sampler. Osiris Rex would then return home with its sample. Interestingly, once it had collected the sample, Osiris would find out how much mass it has in a really clever way. It would do a spin to see the change in inertia with this added weight. If it wasn't able to collect enough samples, it would go in for another try. And so, Osiris Rex began its journey.

Although Benu is a near-Earth asteroid, it also took more than two years to get there. This is because Benu does not orbit along the plane of Earth, and its gravity is incredibly weak, which means Osiris Rex had to slow down a lot, or it would have simply overshot its mark. Interestingly, the Osiris team had a pretty good idea of what Benu would look like long before Osiris Rex even launched. This is because they used radar data to simulate what it would look like. As Osiris Rex approached Benu, the images it sent back were progressively clearer and clearer, and the Osiris team saw that their predictions were surprisingly accurate.

Eventually, it got to within 20 kilometers of the asteroid, and what it saw was amazing. This is an actual time lapse of the Benu asteroid as seen by a few. Cyrus Rex. If you compare the simulation to the actual photographs, it's amazing how accurate their predictions were. As you can see, it's not a particularly smooth asteroid, covered with rough regolith all over the surface. It reminds me a lot of the surface of another asteroid that was visited by the Jaxaprobe, Hayabusa, the asteroid Itokawa, which was more like a clump of rubble than anything else. Benu itself is about 500 meters in diameter. and has this weird spinning top-like shape.

This could be because Benu has a low gravity, but a fast rotation, so Regolith has accumulated there as the asteroid span. Benu is a carbonaceous asteroid, but in the less common B-type classification. This puts it in the same category as the third biggest asteroid in the solar system, Pallas. And Benu could even be the ejector from an early impact in Pallis' life. B-type carbonaceous also means it has a very low albedo, or that it doesn't reflect a lot of sunlight. Other tests showed that it could be an even rarer F-type asteroid instead, and as such

could have been part of the Polana family of asteroid, meaning it would have come from the 55-kilometer big asteroid Polana. In either case, its orbit has changed significantly through various processes and interactions to bring it close to the orbit of Earth. Speaking of his orbit, it is one of the most likely asteroids we know of that could impact Earth. Although, based on the most recent estimate in 2014, this won't happen until 2175. And even then, there is only a one in 2,700 chance of doing so. Before Cyrus Rex went into orbit around Benu, it first needed to see if there were any small moons or debris around the asteroid, so there wouldn't be any risk of a collision.

It did this by going back and forth a few times around the asteroid, also getting a sense of the gravity of an object so small. Once the prime orbit had been located, Osiris Rex took up an initial orbit of roughly 1.75 kilometers above its surface. Interestingly, this means that Benu was the smallest world ever to be orbited by a space space. A 500 meter wide object like Benu barely has any gravity at all, which means one orbit of Benu took 62 hours at that altitude. However, orbiting Benu was necessary to map its surface accurately.

As the spacecraft orbited and the asteroid rotated, Osiris Rex was scanning the surface, creating the highest resolution map of any celestial body to date. Did Osiris Rex find anything interesting during its preliminary scans? Absolutely. Osiris Rex wasn't just taking photos of the asteroid, but it was also mapping the global properties, chemistry, and mineralogy of this primitive carbonaceous asteroid to characterize its geologic and dynamic history, to provide context for the returned samples.

Spectroscopic surveys quickly reveal that there are hydrated, materials, or in other words, clays on the surface of Benu. This is significant. Clays contain water, and Benu was not the type of body where scientists expected to find any. Scientists are still of the belief that a body as small as Benu could never have held its own water. But what this does imply is that liquid water was likely present on the body B'anyu would have originated from, and all that remains of it is what has been locked away in these clays. But while these discoveries were interesting, ultimately, Osiris Rex was doing this to help pick the best site for the sample return part of the mission. Scientists were

looking for the most geologically interesting site that could provide the most interesting sample. But on that front, a problem had already arisen. While scientists had previously mapped out the rough shape of Benu to a surprisingly high degree of accuracy using radar imaging, Benu's small size and corresponding low gravity had led them to believe that Benu would be made of relatively fine materials. This was not the case. Benu was covered in large boulders, some of which were 58 meters across, 20 meters high and about the size of a football field. Other boulders you see here are about the size of a horse. Many asteroids have been described as rubble piles in the past, but I don't think anyone was expecting it at this scale.

This makes picking a landing site a little tricky when ideally you are looking for a patch, roughly 25 metres in diameter, containing particles no bigger than a centimeter, so your sample collector can retrieve a sample safely. However, in the face of this unexpected obstacle, after a year of circling, four smaller landing sites were eventually chosen, named Osprey, Kingfisher, Nightingale and Sandpiper. Even though they were smaller sites than originally hoped for, the sites were relatively free from boulders. You might notice a bird theme here.

Benu itself was named as the result of a contest run by the University of Arizona. the Planet Tree Society and the Linear Project in 2012. In it, more than 8,000 students submitted name ideas. The winner was a third-grade student who wanted to name the asteroid after the Egyptian mythological bird Benu, because he thought that the Osiris Rex's Tagsam arm looked like the graceful extension of a heron's neck, just like the Egyptian god Benu, meaning it was named after the craft visiting it, rather than the shape of the asteroid itself. NASA seems to have kept with this bird-like naming convention. By the end of 2019, Osiris Rex had been circling Benu for a year, but that year was not wasted.

On top of what we've already talked about, yet more discoveries were being made. Considering Benu is seemingly an inactive pile of rocks floating in space, Benu also surprised scientists greatly when Osiris Rex spotted some dynamic activity on the asteroid. Occasional ejection events were spotted, where some material was flung away into space. Some of these particles were even captured in orbit around the asteroid for a few orbits, before eventually returning to the asteroid's surface. This is likely due to the fast rotation of the asteroid, and Osiris Rex was able to detect that this rotation is speeding up very gradually due to the Yorpe effect.

This effect is caused by the slight pushing effect from some of the same. solar radiation, acting on an irregularly shaped object, causing it to rotate faster over very long periods of time. The speed of the rotation can already be seen due to the buildup of rocks along the equator through central fugal forces. If the rotation continues to speed up, then the asteroid might eventually disintegrate altogether when centrifugal forces overcome the gravity of the asteroid. This can already be seen in small events, like the one I showed you before.

In the end, Osiris Rex spent over a year, 505 days circling Benu and mapping out its surface, choosing the best location for its system-spanning Pogo Stick Hop, where it would land its sample collector onto the surface of Benu before firing off again with its thrusters. At last, the moment of truth had come. NASA chose the Nightingale site for Assyrus's landing. The site was set in a crater that seemed to be relatively young and clear of rocks, which came with numerous benefits. Not only would landing be easier, but the recently exposed material beneath Benu's surface would likely be an accurate reflection of the asteroid's internal workings. With the site selected, Osiris began its slow descent. However, it did not

rush in with a single try. Instead, it did practice runs. The first took place on the 15th of April 2020. Osiris Rex approached the asteroid to a distance of 65 meters before activating its thrusters and rising again. Everything worked perfectly and its thrusters worked just as intended. Satisfied with this run, scientists sent it in again. On the 11th of August, Osiris Rex approached at a distance of 40 meters before once again rising. slowly darting forwards and backwards, but drawing ever closer.

And on the 20th of October, this Heron lookalike went in to strike. Using onboard computer systems to plan its trajectory and perform its operations, as the lifetime for signals from Earth rendered real-time remote control of the spacecraft impossible, Osiris slowly reached out to touch the surface of the asteroid. It raised its solar panels in a Y-shaped to keep them out of the space. of the way and protect them from any loose dust that was about to go flying. It reached out its arm to land. It touched the surface.

And then, surprisingly, it kept going. When I think of the surface of asteroids and comets, I imagine them as firm and hard enough to stand on as you might see in films such as Armageddon. But the truth is that, particularly for small asteroids like Benu, their low gravity means that their mass is only loosely held together. What looks like a stable surface is actually loosely held material interspersed with pockets of nothingness. Gaps that mean Benu is so easy to sink into, if you stepped on it, you'd likely vanish inside of it. Like stepping into foam, Osiris Rex's arm sank almost half a meter into the surface of Benu before the thrusters arrested its fall. Furiously activating its

nitrogen gas burst, Osiris blasted a hole in the side of the asteroid. What was expected to kick up a little regalithin dust displaced over six tons of loose rock as all that material, so loosely held together under Benu's tiny gravity, was catapulted in all directions. Osiris Rex's thrusters went into overdrive, burning the most they had ever burned on this trip to pull them away from the expanding cloud of dust. Of course, this was all pre-programmed. NASA had planned for this, although perhaps not to this extreme. Osiris Rex had just made a new, massive crater in Benu. Upon getting away from the asteroid surface, Osiris Rex checked its hall. Remember, it had hoped for 60 grams of material. Instead, it found it had collected somewhere between 400 grams and over 1

kilogram of material. So much material had been collected that a rock got stuck in the flap that closed the sampler's head, causing some small amount of the material to get lost. However, Osiris Rex succeeded in transferring the sampler head to a sealed container built into it. Its mission had been a huge success. For a time, Osiris Rex stayed watching, flying over the asteroid to image it and see the outcome of what it had done. The surface of Ben-Iricks, was different now. Even larger materials had moved far. Just look at how far this boulder was thrown, around 12 meters across Benu's surface. However, Osiris Rex couldn't linger forever. Its sample needed to get back to Earth, and so after performing one last flyby on April 7, 2021, it began a long journey home.

It had been a long time since Osiris Rex had left the Earth. Seven years of anticipation space travel and data sample collection had passed since that first fateful launch. But after a two years and four months and 1.9 billion kilometre homecoming journey, Osiris Rex returned to Earth in September 2023. Or rather, it passed by Earth in order to return its special cargo. As the spacecraft reached a point about 100,000 kilometers away from our planet, It jettisoned the sample return capsule towards the atmosphere on the 24th of September. Then Osiris Rex fired its thrusters to avoid itself colliding with Earth and began a new mission,

which we'll talk about later. This calculated maneuver had to happen within a narrow window of time and adjust the right angle in order for the return capsule to hit its target of about 600 square kilometers in Utah desert in the western United States. That's roughly the size of the city of Chicago, or the size of the Isle of Man. As the capsule hurtled towards Earth at a top speed of 43,000 kilometers per hour, it became the second fastest human-made object to enter Earth's atmosphere, only 3,000 kilometers per hour slower than NASA's Stardust Return capsule. An enduring, astounding, 32 G forces, or 32 times the acceleration due to Earth's gravity.

To put this into context, standing on Earth you receive 1 G, and a typical person would lose consciousness with about 4 to 5 vertical Gs. Today's astronauts experience about 3 Gs during launch, and for very short periods of time, a fighter pilot may be able to withstand up to 8 or 9 Gs, with the help of a specialized suit and training to increase their tolerance. almost unfathomable to imagine the 32 Gs the return capsule was built to withstand. The scalding hot capsule streaked through the atmosphere, reaching peak temperatures of around 2,700 degrees Celsius,

which is about half as hot as the surface of the sun, allowing ground-based infrared trackers to monitor its progress. Inside the capsule, the 120 gram sample from Astroi Benu was protected from these extreme temperatures, thanks to an advanced thermal protection system called PICA, or phenolic impregnated carbon ablator, which removed more than 99% of the kinetic energy of the vehicle and kept the sample below 75 degrees Celsius. Pica is a type of ablative heat shield, which works by using a protective layer on the outside

of a spacecraft to safeguard it during re-entry. Because the spacecraft experiences extreme friction on its way down through the atmosphere, it generates immense heat. As the temperature of the shield heats up, it burns away its outer layer in a process called ablation. During this process, the heat shield melts and vaporizes, and those gases carry the heat away from the spacecraft. This sacrificial shield prevents heat from reaching the interior of the return capsule,

keeping the asteroid sample cool and safe. A couple of minutes after re-entry, the capsule decelerated enough to release the first of two parachutes, which helped to stabilize it for the remainder of its trip to the surface. About 16 kilometers from the ground, radars were able to lock onto the capsule's location and track it to within about 10 meters of where it would eventually land. And for the final kilometer and a half of descent, a second parachute was deployed to soften the landing to a leisurely speed of 18 kilometers per hour. or about the average speed of a cyclist on flat ground.

From the moment it pierced Earth's atmosphere to when the capsule gently touched down in the rugged desert landscape of Utah, it took just 10 minutes. After years of planning, months of special training, and several rehearsals, the NASA recovery team moved in by helicopter to secure the return capsule and its contents. To ensure the sample was not exposed to Earth's environment, the capsule was not exposed to Earth's environment, The capsule remained closed until after it had been moved to a clean room and decontaminated, but opening the sample canister didn't quite go according to plan. Within a couple of weeks, scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas,

were able to open the outer lid, revealing 70 grams of dark gray rocks and dust outside of the sample canister. Apparently, not all that extra material it had picked up had stayed around. Still, 70 grams was nothing to sniff at. It was 10 grams more than scientists had hoped to collect in their initial mission plan. While this bonus material from Benu was able to be analyzed and used in scientific research, it wasn't as pristine as the material held inside the inner sample canister. However, it would take months and the invention of a new tool before the curation team at

the Johnson Space Center was able to open the main sample canister to reveal the deal this pristine material. The mission was meticulously planned, so why did they need to invent a new tool just to open the canister? And why did it take so long? Well, for one thing, the bonus material slowed down the process of getting into the inner canister because all of that extra material had to be carefully removed, catalogued and stored. Another reason this took a long time is because all of these tedious tiles,

tasks had to be done inside of a nitrogen purged glove box, an enclosed box with built-in gloves that is constantly flooded with a flow of neutral nitrogen gas to make sure the sample does not react with other gases in Earth's atmosphere like oxygen or water vapor. While use of this clean environment was necessary to make sure the sample remained uncontaminated, the glove box made a set of already tedious tasks even more difficult. But the main slowdown came during disassembly of the Tag Sam, when two of the 35 fasteners holding it shut could not be removed with existing tools. The two problem screws had been infiltrated by dust from Benu, essentially causing the threads

to be stripped. Imagine having successfully retrieved this capsule after its arduous journey to Benu and back just to not be able to actually open it. NASA engineers wouldn't be NASA engineers if they didn't immediately set to work to invent what was needed to crack this nut open. Because the samples needed to be protected from any contamination, the new screwdriver-like tool with custom fabricated bits made from a specific grade of surgical non-magnetic stainless steel had to be designed, fabricated, and tested before it could be introduced into

the pristine glove box. But all of this time and effort paid off. Three and a half months after the return capsule touchdown on Earth, the creation team was finally able to access the material inside the canister using these new tools. Another 51 grams of pristine Benu material was revealed, and when combined with the boneless rocks and dust already collected, the total amounted to more than twice what the mission had aimed to bring back to Earth. The material was then catalogued and divided into smaller samples.

At least 70% of the material will be preserved in its pristine condition for future generations to have the opportunity to study, and from the remaining material, more than 200 scientists at labs around the world will have the chance to study pieces of asteroid Benu. Just imagine being able to study a piece of our solar system's past. a sample packed with clues about the origins of life and the early solar system. What awesome stories could an ancient relic like Benu tell? Just over a week after recovering the return capsule from Osiris Rex, scientists got their first look at the bonus asteroid soil sample called Regolith.

While Benu might have broken off from a much larger asteroid one or two billion years ago, its present-day chemistry and mineralogy were already set in stone, so to speak, more than 4.5 billion years ago. Since its composition has remained relatively unchanged, Benu contains the primordial ingredients that were present before our planets existed. The sample from Benu contains what are called pre-solar grains, which are microscopic crystals that condensed before our sun came to be. Depending on the composition of these pre-solar grains, we can get an idea for the types of stars that existed before the first of the stars that existed before our own solar system formed.

The higher, the mass of a star, the heavier elements it will be able to fuse together. For example, small and intermediate mass stars burned by fusing light elements like hydrogen into helium and may eventually fuse heavier elements such as carbon and nitrogen. Large mass stars can fuse together even heavier elements like silicon and iron. Importantly, these large mass stars can end their life in a supernova explosion. motion, creating elements even heavier than iron. Because these elements from stellar fusion gets spread across the universe and recycled to form new stars, asteroids and planets, we can learn about the ancient building blocks of our

own solar system by looking at these pre-solar grains. A cosmochemist at the University of Arizona and member of the Osiris Rex team said that initial analysis of these pre-solar grains showed evidence of small and mean, medium-sized stars, but also of supernovae. In fact, later study of these grains by a team at NASA's Johnson Space Center revealed they contained six times the amount of supernova dust than any other astromaterial that had been studied on Earth before. This supports the idea that our solar system was enriched by a range of different size stars

long before our solar system formed. The initial analysis of the asteroid sample revealed a dust rich in carbon and nitrogen. But there was more. Recently, amid the dust of Benu, scientists found 15 out of the 20 amino acids that all living things on Earth stem from, as well as five biological nuclear bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymein, and urosil, the basic components that make up DNA. Additionally, a team led by Yoshihiro Furukawa at Tohoku University in Japan discovered essential sugars in the sample from Benu, including ribose, and for the first time ever,

glucose, an important energy source for life. The discovery of ribose and not deoxyribose indicates that ribose may have been a more common sugar in the early solar system, supporting the RNA world hypothesis that the first forms of life relied on RNA and not DNA to store information and drive their chemical processes. Another team at NASA's Ames Research Center discovered a brand new material never before seen in in space rocks, a space gum made of polymeric materials rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Shaving the material down to thinner than a human hair, they used electron microscopy and x-ray spectroscopy to study its chemical structure, revealing this strange substance had been deposited

in layers on grains of ice and minerals in the asteroid and appeared to be close to polyurethane in composition, although a far more random composition than the plastic we're used to seeing on Earth. Complex molecules like these may have provided some of the precursors for triggering life on Earth, and finding them on an extraterrestrial asteroid like Benu is like, gold dust for scientists studying how life began and whether it might exist beyond the reaches of earth. These delicate, complex molecular structures represent a fascinating find, proving that the building blocks of life were widespread across the solar system. But they also showcased the value of this gentler sample collection strategy. They would not have survived a fiery atmospheric re-entry,

so it was only by being brought here by Osiris that we could prove the early solar system contained so many of these vital compounds. NASA's Osiris Rex science team also, once again, found evidence of water in Benu's past in the form of water-bearing clay minerals in the sample. These clay minerals confirmed what scientists had previously observed in spectroscopic surveys of Benu, as we mentioned earlier. They indicated that Benu may have to be able to. originated from a larger body that once contained water. But how did these ingredients of life

form on such a seemingly barren asteroid? And why is their evidence of water? As it turns out, these essential ingredients of life are actually abundant throughout the universe. Planetary scientists and astronomers have identified organic compounds across our solar system, throughout the Milky Way galaxy, and even in interstellar space. We find that we find that we have identified organic compounds across our solar system, We find these compounds in asteroids and meteorites, on moons, in nebulae across the galaxy, and beyond. All it takes for these simple building blocks of life to form is a combination of oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, which are the third, fourth, and fifth most abundant elements in the universe

by number of atoms respectively. These elements are created inside of stars, and remnants from those ancient stars are spread across the universe. We are made of star stuff, and from what we've learned, the stuff of life is abundant. But the presence of amino acids and other organic compounds doesn't mean that life ever arose in those places. In fact, with no atmosphere and temperatures ranging from a frigid negative 73 degrees Celsius up to a scorching 116 degrees Celsius, Benu is not a very hospitable place for life to have developed.

Rather, the presence of organic compounds means the building blocks of life seem to be abundant throughout the universe. And asteroid Benu is further proof. Astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan once compared the emergence of life to a musical composition. The organic compounds on Benu are like a collection of unorganized musical notes that do not yet create the music itself. Still, finding these molecules in such a pristine sample from Benu is exciting, as these minerals could offer clues about the chemical reactions that predate biology.

More intriguingly, perhaps, is that planetary scientists like Sarah Russell at London's Natural History Museum and the Cyrus Rex team member, said the sample is dominated by hydrated minerals, suggesting that Benu may have once been part of a larger body that harboured water. The sample was packed with evidence of dynamic transformations that occurred over time in the presence of water, like clay minerals or salts left after water evaporates. It contained a mineral called serpentine, which mirrors a type of rock that we find at mid-ocean ridges on Earth. These mid-ocean ridges are where molten material rises up from within Earth's mantle

and encounters water, creating new crust along the ocean floor. Benu's regolith also harbored pyrotite, an iron-sulfide material that can form the hydrothermal vents on Earth. And even more surprisingly, the Osiris Rex team found phosphates in the sample, an essential component of DNA, and in turn, for life on Earth. The presence of these water-soluble phosphates indicates that billions of years ago, Benu may have been part of a larger water-soaked mud ball, or even a world, with an active geology and an abundance of organic compounds.

Well, there isn't enough evidence yet to conclude that Benu came from an ancient water world. Harold Connolly, a geologist at Rowan University and Osiris Rex Mishing Soundwall scientist, said that evidence of warm water over time in the sample does indicate that Benu's parent body was at least 10 kilometres wide or even larger. Although more research is happening in order to further study these indications, it's incredible to imagine that Benu may have originated from a much larger asteroid, or a proto-planet that shared some important characteristics with the primitive Earth, or with some of the icy, ocean-covered moons across the solar system like Enceladus or Europa.

So what else can we learn from the Benu samples, and what comes next for the Osiris-Rex spacecraft? The data and samples from Osiris-Rex will keep scientists busy for years to come, as planetary scientists, geologists, astrobiologists, chemists, and interdisciplinary research teams around the world continue to study this one-of-a-kind sample from Benu. And while we have a pretty good understanding of how the solar system and our planets formed, this is giving us the opportunity to calibrate, confirm, and adjust our current knowledge and to explore the answers to new questions that are only possible because of the Osiris Rex mission. Did the stellar nebula of dust and gas that went to form our sun and planets all come

from just one ancient star? Or did it come from multiple generations of stars of different star types? Where did Benu's parent body form? And what materials was it made of? And during Earth's formation and early existence, did some of its water or organic compounds come from asteroids? These are just a few of the long list of questions that scientists are hoping to shed light on in the coming years with the help from the Benu sample.

As for the spacecraft's missions, they don't end there. About 20 minutes after releasing the Benu sample capsule above Earth's atmosphere, the Asiris Rex spacecraft fired its engines to send it on a new trajectory and a new mission. Having captured a sample of Benu, this Egyptian heron will be off to slay a new beast, a Popfus, the Egyptian serpent of chaos, destroyer of light and order. or more accurately, the Apophis asteroid, a 370-meter-diameter asteroid that is believed to be passing within 50,000 kilometers of Earth in 2029. Let's hope that the asteroid does not behave in a way that's too in keeping with its Egyptian namesake. Either way, Osiris will be heading

off to investigate it. Starting in June, 2021, it will begin an 18-month campaign to map the asteroid's surface, analyze its chemical makeup, and to observe any changes that happen to a pop-fist during a near-Earth encounter. Finally, the spacecraft will repeat one of its most impressive maneuvers from the mission to Benu by dipping within 16 feet of the asteroid surface and firing its thrusters to stir up rocks and dust. To reflect this extension of the mission, Osiris has been given a new name. No longer is it Osiris Rex.

It is now Osiris Apophis Explorer, or Assyrus Apex. With a name like that, perhaps its greatest discoveries are yet to come. So there you have it. Investigations are ongoing, but already the initial analysis of Venous samples have exceeded our expectations in several ways. Whether Osiris Rex or Assyrus Apex, this asteroid hopping probe has already achieved incredible results and executed a flawless mission. I for one can't wait to see what other secrets Benu and Apophis will reveal. A massive thank you to our astronomers on Patreon. This video had

no sponsors, but it was still made possible thanks to the hundreds of members we have there. Link is in the description to join our growing community. Patreon is where Astrom truly takes shape. A place for people who love space, who want to see these videos keep improving. improving and reaching more curious minds. Every new member keeps the channel focused on what really matters, making the complexity of space available to everyone. If you enjoy what we do, come join the Astrum community today.