Subsequent yr, NASA plans to scoop up a small batch of filth from an asteroid named Bennu, positioned tens of millions of miles from Earth — and now the company is aware of which a part of the house rock it’s going to steal from. At the moment, the house company introduced that considered one of its spacecraft will attempt to grab some particles from a 20-meter-wide crater, referred to as Nightingale, on the asteroid.
Engineers picked the Nightingale website from 4 remaining candidate spots on Bennu, arguing it might be the very best place to search out natural materials and water on the asteroid that will hail from the earliest days of the Photo voltaic System. “This one actually got here out on prime, due to the scientific worth,” Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the asteroid sampling mission, mentioned throughout a press convention saying the choice. Nonetheless, focusing on the crater is just not with out danger. The realm is surrounded by a big wall of rocks, which might make it troublesome to seize a pattern. However in the end, Lauretta mentioned the world might have what they’re in search of.
