Carefully protected from Earth's
atmosphere in a special chamber, these
tiny granules contain material older
than our sun. They were collected by a
spacecraft from the asteroid Bennu. And
the first major study of their chemistry
shows they contain preolar grains.
That's matter from dying stars at least
4.6 billion years old.
>> It sort of really reinforces this idea
that we are stardust. So everything that
makes up our bodies and our planet
originally was formed in stars that were
ancestors to our solar system. And we
can really see that story inside the
Bennu asteroid by looking at these tiny
grains that formed even before our solar
system.
The sample was collected by NASA's
Osiris Rex spacecraft that intercepted
Bennu while it was 200 million miles
from Earth and scooped up 120 g of
material from its surface which it
brought back for analysis. It's precious
because it is a window to the swirling
gas and dust that formed not just
asteroids but planets.
Asteroids like Bennu are a time capsule
of conditions early in our solar systems
history. Meteorites that crash to Earth,
the contaminated as they come through
the atmosphere. But Bennu is pristine,
and that's what makes these results so
exciting. Space rocks bombarding the
Earth early in its history are thought
to have brought water and the
ingredients for life. And studying
samples help scientists piece together
how Earth came to be habitable. Thomas
Moore, Sky News at the Natural History
Museum.