The magnificent specimen of the asteroid Bennu is on display in a museum in the United States

suddenly, Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals Subordinate Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Located in Washington, DC, the strip has become the most visited by visitors, who since last Friday come in crowds to see Asteroid fragment Pinowhich is NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft Brought to Earth On September 24, after a journey that lasted 7 years and millions of kilometers.

Thousands of people were already able to see A small interplanetary rock Its first observer was the director of NASA. Bill Nelson Who, along with other officials from the space agency and the Smithsonian Institution, starred in the dedication ceremony for the object that has traveled far and wide through our solar system.

space ship Osiris Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Explorer-Regolith) Its sample return capsule landed safely on September 24 in the Utah desert, Completing a two-and-a-half-year journey from the asteroid Bennu.

“I’m very excited “I welcome you to the National Museum of Natural History at the moment I first started dreaming about 20 years ago,” said Tim McCoy, the museum’s curator of meteorites and a member of the OSIRIS-REx science team.

“Having an asteroid sample returned by a spacecraft joining us here is a major milestone. It’s the start of where we’re going. Where we’re going is trying to use this sample to really understand our unique planet,” he noted.

About 50 people, including members of the press and public, crowded into the meteorite section of the museum to observe The piece is presented in a stainless steel bottle with a glass hole.

The jet black rocks are coated with a pure nitrogen environment to keep them in the best preservation condition possible.

There are two patterns surrounding the display, which is approximately 0.3 inches (8 mm) in diameter and 0.005 ounces (143 milligrams). On the left is a 1:84 scale replica of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that powered the start of the asteroid sample return mission in 2016. On the right is a 1:84:24 scale model of NASA’s Lockheed Martin-OSIRIS probe -Rex.

“Could this asteroid fragment contain information about the beginnings of our solar system and the formation of life on Earth?” Beano sample display reads.

“Scientists can now study water-rich minerals and carbon-rich molecules “That formed before life existed within it to better understand the origins of the solar system, Earth’s oceans, and life itself,” he continues.

The deeper meaning of Benno was a recurring theme during the morning reveal; The fact that this asteroid is believed to be cut from the same fabric that formed our solar system long ago. And as he said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson During this event, space rocks like this not only fly through our solar system, but they can also “Fly through other distant solar systems in the universePerhaps, he said, asteroids similar to Bennu might have passed through some cosmic neighborhood like our own.

“In the four and a half or five billion years of the evolution of this solar system, the 13.8 billion years of the evolution of the universe And billions of galaxies, Each of them contains billions of stars, and these objects collide with each other, forming some gas clouds and spewing out stars. Then it all crashes into each other. “At the end of the day, we have leftovers from that,” Nelson said.

A tomography scan of the fragment, described by NASA scientists at Johnson Space Center in Houston as OREX-800027-0, showed that The stone consists of dozens of small rocks That they were fragments that had been glued back together and that the whole piece was strongly altered by water, producing clays, iron oxides, sulphides and iron carbonates as the main minerals, along with carbon.

“It was really about finding a stone that we thought was typical of the type of material that had been brought back to us We needed something that would last. “To put this here, it had to be transported across the country,” McCoy said of how this particular rock was chosen for display.

“We also wanted something attractive to photograph, something relatively flat,” he added. NASA scientists have narrowed the selection to five or six candidate stones. “He was Kind of a moderator effect“This one was too big, this one was too small, and they found a perfect one,” McCoy said. The expert added: “And this is what we can share with the American public.”

In addition to the stone now on display, another portion of Bennu has also been loaned to the Smithsonian for scientific study. Two additional rocks will be on display at the Alfie Norvell Museum of Gems and Minerals at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the Space Center in Houston, NASA officials said.It is located next to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, where most of Bennu’s samples for scientific studies are located.

Opening dates for these exhibitions have not yet been announced, although it may be November 15.