Asteroid sample: Canada will get its share

Canada will receive part of the largest sample ever collected from the asteroid, which landed in the Utah desert in the United States on Sunday.

• Read also: NASA returns the first asteroid sample to Earth

The sample from the asteroid Bennu is also the first sample collected for NASA.

Recall that at 10:52 a.m. Sunday, the OSIRIS-REx mission’s sample return capsule landed in the Utah desert.

This sample, which was captured in 2020 in space, should contain about 250 grams of the substance, according to the US Space Agency.

Most of it will be kept for study by future generations, part of it will be used for experiments, while another part 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 origin of water and life on Earth,” the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) explained.

It will be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for safekeeping and distribution to international scientists and collaborators. Specialists from the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian researchers will participate in selecting the part of the sample that will be allocated to Canada, which is scheduled to arrive at the John H. Chapman Space Center (the headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency) in 2024 “at the earliest.” .

Canada will thus become the fifth country to receive and preserve an asteroid sample taken from space.