Bennu asteroid samples point to a surprising origin involving Jupiter

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Add as preferred source The asteroid Bennu, seen from 24 kilometers. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona The asteroid Bennu orbits the sun once every 1.2 years and approaches Earth every six years, passing within around 300,000 kilometers. NASA took advantage of this to collect material from the celestial body. In a spectacular operation in 2023, the US space agency collected samples from the surface of the asteroid Bennu by its OSIRIS-REx probe.

On Sept. 23, the sample container landed in the Utah desert, carrying around 120 grams of material from Bennu. From there, a small but precious portion made its way to ETH Zurich: Maria Schönbächler, professor of isotope geochemistry, received half a gram for analysis. Her laboratory began analyzing the samples immediately.