A long way, and a lot of money, for half a cup.

But, as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And small though the sample may be, it is 20 times greater than the amount of asteroid material previously returned to Earth by a pair of Japanese sample return missions. A little will go a long way as scientists study the organics and other materials in this asteroid dust to divine clues to the origin of life and conditions that existed at the dawn of our Solar System. You don’t need handfuls of material to get a meaningful result from an electron microscope.

Moreover, the sample retrieval was double the minimum requirement for the mission, 60 grams. So, OSIRIS-REx can now definitively be labeled as an unqualified success.

  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    41·
    9 months ago

    The headline might be a bit clickbait, but the article itself is a positive one:

    But, as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And small though the sample may be, it is 20 times greater than the amount of asteroid material previously returned to Earth by a pair of Japanese sample return missions. A little will go a long way as scientists study the organics and other materials in this asteroid dust to divine clues to the origin of life and conditions that existed at the dawn of our Solar System. You don’t need handfuls of material to get a meaningful result from an electron microscope.

    Moreover, the sample retrieval was double the minimum requirement for the mission, 60 grams. So, OSIRIS-REx can now definitively be labeled as an unqualified success.

    Perhaps I should add this to the main post body.