The research could help explain the origin of planetary bodies
A physicist at Cal State San Marcos has been awarded $1.2 million by NASA to help analyze dust particles from a near-Earth asteroid that’s expected to hold clues about the origins of planetary bodies.
The spacecraft is en route back to Earth, where it will drop its payload into the Utah desert, via parachute, about a year from now.“The first particle sample we will get will be about one millimeter in size — or about the size of the lead at the end of a pencil,” Dominguez told the Union-Tribune. It’s delicate work. Dominguez has to secure the particle so that it won’t be blown away by a tiny amount of moving air, or shaken loose from its mount by small vibrations.
It is considered to be a near-Earth asteroid because it comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth and measures at least 460 feet in diameter. In apublished last year, scientists said there is a roughly 1-in-2,700 chance that Bennu will collide with Earth on Sept. 24, 2182.
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