Canada is receiving part of the largest asteroid sample ever collected, which landed in the Utah desert in the United States on Sunday.
• Also read: NASA brings its first asteroid sample back to Earth
The sample from asteroid Bennu is also the first collected for NASA.
Recall that the sample return capsule of the OSIRIS-REx mission landed in the Utah desert at 10:52 a.m. on Sunday morning.
According to the American space agency, this sample, taken in space in 2020, must contain around 250 grams of material.
The majority will be reserved for future generations to study, some will be used for experiments, while some will be donated to Japan and Canada.
“The asteroid sample could provide answers to some fundamental questions about the history of the solar system and the origins of water and life on Earth,” said the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
It will be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be stored and distributed to international scientists and collaborators. Canadian Space Agency specialists and Canadian researchers will be involved in selecting the portion of the sample to be allocated to Canada, which is scheduled to arrive at the John H. Chapman Space Center (CSA headquarters) “at the earliest” in 2024. .
Canada will become the fifth country to receive and store an asteroid sample taken from space.