Inside Constructing 31 at Johnson Area Heart, NASA scientists have opened the steel canister holding rocks the company plucked off a distant asteroid.

NASA has spent months attempting to launch two “cussed” fasteners on the canister’s lid, which was no simple feat. The asteroid receptacle, after parachuting all the way down to Earth from outer house, has been (understandably) remoted inside a specially-designed glovebox, with restricted instruments and entry.

Now, the lid is open, and the company has snapped an image of the majority of what it captured from asteroid Bennu, a 1,600-foot-wide asteroid composed of boulders and rubble. It is the prize of the company’s first ever mission to deliver pristine items of an asteroid again to our planet, an endeavor known as OSIRIS-REx (quick for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Useful resource Identification, and Safety – Regolith Explorer).

“It’s open! It’s open! And prepared for its closeup,” NASA wrote on X, previously Twitter.

You possibly can see darkish rocks as much as about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) huge, and smaller particles of various sizes.

Items of asteroid Bennu inside NASA’s OSIRIS-REx pattern canister.
Credit score: NASA / Erika Blumenfeld / Joseph Aebersold

These samples are invaluable. Asteroid Bennu, like many asteroids, is a preserved time capsule from our historical photo voltaic system. It is round 4.5 billion years previous, so these pristine rocks can present scientists perception into how objects like planets fashioned, and the way Earth may need gotten its water.

To seize these samples, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft approached asteroid Bennu in October 2020 and prolonged an arm containing the canister (known as TAGSAM, or the Contact-and-Go Pattern Acquisition Mechanism). The craft then pushed in opposition to Bennu for simply 5 seconds, blowing nitrogen gasoline onto the asteroid, which propelled the rocks and mud into the canister.

Over three years later, chunks of Bennu are safely saved at NASA’s Johnson Area Heart.

For the subsequent two years, NASA’s science group will intensively examine these samples. But it surely will not hoard them. The company stated that over 200 scientists globally will analysis Bennu’s rocks and mud. What’s extra, a few of the asteroid pattern can be preserved for future scientists — with know-how we do not have or have not even envisioned — to investigate.

What secrets and techniques will Bennu reveal?