NASA’s asteroid Bennu samples reveal a 4.5-billion-year-old secret

Tiny samples from asteroid Bennu are rewriting scientists’ understanding of how our Solar System formed. New evidence suggests that Bennu was born where material from the inner and outer Solar System mixed, with Jupiter playing a surprising role in shaping its formation. NASA’s asteroid Bennu samples reveal a 4.5-billion-year-old secret.

A new chemical analysis challenges earlier theories about the asteroid’s birthplace and suggests that Jupiter played an important role in shaping the materials from which Bennu and other ancient objects formed. Bennu completes one orbit around the Sun every 1.2 years and makes a relatively close approach to Earth about every six years, coming within roughly 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles). NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to the asteroid, collected material from its surface, and successfully delivered the samples to Earth in 2023.

On September 23, 2023, a capsule carrying about 120 grams of asteroid material landed in the Utah desert. Scientists around the world later received small portions of the precious cargo for detailed study. Among them was Maria Schönbächler, Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at ETH Zurich, whose laboratory received half a gram of Bennu material.