Last September , NASA ’s OSIRIS - REx brought back to Earth thebiggest haulof asteroid stuff in the history of humanity . And among that , there are the largest physical fragments of an asteroid : pebbles and other belittled rocks from the surface of asteroid Bennu . By contrast , the Hayabusa investigation that pull together samples from Itokawa and Ryugu , severally , brought back only grain from the two space rock’n’roll .

OSIRIS - REx managed to collect so much more both in terms of quite a little and sizing . The entire amount of material is 121.6 gramme ( 4.29 ounces ) , double the mission goal . Roughly 70.3 gm ( 2.48 ounces ) were accessedvery soonafter the ejector seat put down . For the remaining material , a problem with thefastenersof the Touch - and - Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism ( TAGSAM ) , meant some holdup and creative solution to get them budging .

“ Once we suffer TAGSAM fully open we saw the resplendent 121.6 grams . It ’s an interesting numeral . It ’s more than twice what we are required to bring back , but it ’s less than half of what I cerebrate we had . It ’s exciting because it ’s more than we anticipate , but also a small bit like ‘ oh , I intend I had more’,”Professor Dante Lauretta , the principal investigator for OSIRIS - REX , separate IFLScience . He then jokingly added : “ I try not to be greedy ! ”

" Huge achievement " is almost an understatement for this try . The collection from Hayabusa-2 of about 5.4 grams ( less than 1 Panthera uncia ) has been already revolutionary , deliveringphenomenal discoveriessuch as the presence of aminic window pane and H2O - bearing minerals . Of the approachable 70 grams from Bennu , 1 gram has been distributed to inquiry center across the US and internationally . From that preliminary analysis alone , 58 presentation with findings will take place at the upcomingLunar and Planetary Science Conference . And there is much more to come .

“ We have stones up to three and a half centimeter [ 1.4 inches ] in their prospicient dimension , and a set of stones in the cm size grasp , ” Professor Lauretta told IFLScience . “ Currently , what we ’ve been doing is characterizing those Stone . We are doing a great deal of body of work in Houston , in the curation lab , to understand the nature of that cloth . Those are the rarified parts of the collection and are scientifically really worthful because you get the whole rock music texture at a larger ordered series . And that ’s going to be important for the processes that we desire to analyse . ”

One of those processes is about the origin of asteroidBennuitself . The team is super mad about the possibility that Bennu might have form from an ocean reality – a much large body that had limpid water supply – mayhap under an icy or jolty outside like the frosty synodic month of Jupiter or Saturn . Enceladus is a good example , but this parent trunk would be half its size , so about 250 km across ( 155 miles ) across .

“ We still have piece of work to do to test that conjecture . I would say there ’s really three lines of evidence decent now that ’s make me think about sea world , ” Professor Lauretta , who is the director of the Arizona Astrobiology Center , tell IFLScience .

The first one is evidence ofserpentinite , a type of rock that shape when red-hot fiery or metamorphous rocks meet water supply . On Earth , that pass at mid - ocean ridges and similar places .

A second line of evidence is about the bulk composition . Some psychoanalysis have show an abundance of element soluble in water , such as sodium , K , uranium , thorium , and barium . On top of that , the work suggests they were shifted there by a fluid .

The third piece of grounds is the presence of a phosphate crust on some of the sampling that have been analyze . Lauretta name it as a sort of coating on the rocks and it looks like something that was leave behind as water evaporate . Theoceans of Enceladusare abundant in phosphates .

“ All those three things support the supposition . And I do want to emphasize it ’s just a surmise decently now . We ’re still come up with ideas on how to test it . But to me , it ’s the moderate nominee for the geological environment that these rock and roll work in , ” Professor Lauretta told IFLScience .

With just a few calendar month of analysis , the Bennu sampling is already making us giddy with possibilities . It is a windowpane into the early time of the Solar System and will ply new sixth sense into asteroid and terrestrial formation . And , it might even help us explain how water came to our major planet , and maybe about the building blocks of life as well .