Nasa unlocks Bennu asteroid sample hidden behind stubborn fasteners

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) recently unlocked two stubborn fasteners that trapped invaluable material sampled from an asteroid after a months-long process.

Nasa has already collected 2.5 grams of rocks and dust from its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission, which travelled nearly 4 billion miles to collect an unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

However, some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu, CNN reported.

Nasa revealed that the fasteners required the use of preapproved materials and tools to loosen the sampler head, minimising the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples.

Dr Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement, said: “These new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement.

“The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success.”

To address the issue, Nasa created two tools from surgical steel — “the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes,” according to the space agency.

Nasa stated that the sample material that was caught was still unknown.

There are still “a few additional disassembly steps,” the space agency said. According to Nasa, the hidden stockpile can then be weighed, extracted, and photographed after taking those steps.

Nasa researchers have analysed material from Bennu, revealing abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals and carbon. This evidence supports the current theory of water’s arrival on Earth billions of years ago, according to scientists.

“The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals landed on Earth 4 billion years ago to 4 and a half billion years ago, making our world habitable,” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said in October.

“So we’re seeing the way that water got incorporated into the solid material,” he added.

Additionally, some of the previously harvested Bennu samples have been hermetically sealed in storage containers for future study over decades.