Space & Astronomy

It’s official: NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft snagged 121.6 grams of pristine space rocks when it bopped the asteroid Bennu four years ago, more than double the mission’s official science goal, the agency confirmed February 15.

Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-Rex is NASA’s first mission to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth so scientists can study our solar system’s origins. After performing its grab-and-go procedure from the diamond-shaped Bennu, the spacecraft dropped its canister into our atmosphere last year (SN: 9/22/23). Engineers swiftly shuttled it off to a specially designed sample curation center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it was placed in a hermetic glove box to prevent contamination by terrestrial material.

The diamond-shaped asteroid Bennu, seen here during OSIRIS-Rex’s approach, is a loose rubble pile held together by gravity.NASA Goddard, University of Arizona

While researchers have been able to analyze some rocks and dust already, weighing the full sample has been delayed by a couple stuck screws that prevented anyone from accessing the entire contents of the capsule (SN: 10/11/23). Some clever workarounds finally unlocked the full sample on January 10, and it will now be distributed to scientists around the world for study.

To learn how engineers got the canister open, as well as what kinds of science the sample will teach us, Science News spoke with Harold Connolly, a geologist at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., who oversees analysis of the material from Bennu. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. More

An uncanny resemblance to the Death Star might not be the only intriguing thing about Saturn’s moon Mimas. It could also harbor a vast ocean of liquid water beneath its pockmarked exterior.

A new look at data from NASA’s Cassini probe reveals that the point in Mimas’ orbit where it comes closest to Saturn changed slightly over 13 years, researchers report February 7 in Nature. Because Mimas’ internal composition affects the gravitational dance between the moon and its planet, these orbital dynamics, along with some previously seen moon wobbles, point to a liquid interior, astronomer Valéry Lainey of the Paris Observatory and colleagues say. More

Around 2.5 million years ago, an asteroid may have exploded over Antarctica. 

The evidence comes from a chemical analysis of more than 100 tiny pieces of rock entrained within the White Continent’s ice, researchers report in the Feb. 1 Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The timing makes the midair detonation the oldest known airburst, the team says. Only two other ancient airburst events are known in the geologic record, dating to 480,000 and 430,000 years ago (SN: 3/31/21).   More

Future interplanetary explorers beware: Hitchhiking bacteria brought to Mars on human bodies might not only survive the harsh conditions on the Red Planet’s surface but also potentially thrive.

Recent experiments exposed four common disease-causing microbes to a simulated Mars-like environment, with its lack of water, scant atmospheric pressure, deadly ultraviolet radiation and toxic salts. The bacteria remained alive for various periods of time and, in some cases, even grew in the imitation Martian sands, researchers report in the January Astrobiology. More

After nearly three years, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, the first spacecraft to undertake a powered flight on another world, has ended its mission. Officials at the agency confirmed on January 25 that the history-making quad-copter has sustained damage to one of its rotor blades and is no longer capable of flying.

“While we knew this day was inevitable, it doesn’t make it any easier,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s planetary science division director, during a news conference on the status of the quad-copter. More