NASA plans to scoop a small amount of soil from an asteroid named Bennu, located millions of miles from Earth, next year, but the agency currently has no idea which part of the space rock it will steal from. There is. Today, the space agency says that one of its spacecraft is Attempt to capture particles from a 20 meter wide crateris called Nightingale on the Asteroid.
Engineers selected the Nightingale site from four shortlisted sites in Bennes, arguing it could be the best place to find organic matter and water in an asteroid that may have formed early in the solar system. . “In terms of scientific value, this was really the best,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the asteroid sampling mission, said at a press conference announcing the selection. But targeting the crater is not without risks. The area is surrounded by large rock walls, which can make it difficult to collect samples. But in the end, Lauretta said, the area may have what they’re looking for.