Provided by Bill Steigerwald, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Born from the rubble of a violent collision, hurled through space for millions of years and dismembered by the gravity of planets, asteroid Bennu had a tough life in a rough neighborhood: the early solar system. Bennus Journey, a new animation created at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, shows whats known and what remains mysterious about the life of Bennu and the origin of the solar system.

[ Watch the Video: Asteroid Bennus Journey ]

We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution, said Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona, Deputy Principal Investigator for NASAs asteroid-sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security Regolith Explorer). The mission will be launched toward Bennu in late 2016, arrive at the asteroid in 2018, and return a sample of Bennus surface to Earth in 2023. Bennus experiences will tell us more about where our solar system came from and how it evolved. Like the detectives in a crime show episode, well examine bits of evidence from Bennu to understand more completely the story of the solar system, which is ultimately the story of our origin.

The video opens with an establishing shot of the galaxy and moves in to a nebula a vast cloud of gas and dust ejected from the explosions of dying stars. From observations of other star-forming regions in our galaxy, scientists have a good idea of the basic outlines of how our solar system came to be, according to Beshore. As shown in the animation, a nearby exploding star disrupts material in the nebula, causing part of it to collapse under its own gravity and form a disk of material surrounding the infant Sun.

Within this disk, bits of dust are flash heated to molten rock and solidify to become chondrules some of the building blocks of the solar system. Chondrules are shown in the animation as they clump together via electrostatic and gravitational forces to become asteroids and planets.

Chondrules may make up a large part of the material in Bennu. On planets like Earth, the original materials have been profoundly altered by geologic activity and chemical reactions with our atmosphere and water. We think Bennu may be relatively unchanged, so this asteroid is like a time capsule for us to examine, said Beshore. By analyzing the sample collected from Bennu, the OSIRIS-REx team will be able to examine some of the most pristine material to be found anywhere in the solar system.

Bennu may also harbor organic material from the young solar system. Organic matter is made of molecules containing primarily carbon and hydrogen atoms and is fundamental to terrestrial life. The analysis of any organic material found on Bennu will give scientists an inventory of the materials present at the beginning of the solar system that may have had a role in the origin of life. By bringing this material back to Earth, we can do a far more thorough analysis than we can with instruments on a spacecraft, because of practical limits on the size, mass, and energy consumption of what can be flown, said Beshore. We will also set aside returned materials for future generations to study with instruments and capabilities we cant even imagine now.

The mission also will contribute to NASAs Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which will identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with samples. ARM is part of NASAs plan to advance new capabilities needed for future human missions to Mars. OSIRIS-REx also will support the agencys efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions.

The early solar system was quite chaotic. Giant impact craters throughout the inner solar system indicate there may have been a late heavy bombardment by asteroids approximately 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, right around the origin of life on Earth. The video illustrates one theory for this. The massive gas giant planet Jupiter began to migrate inward closer to the Sun due to gravitational interactions with the outer gas giant planets. Jupiters gravity disrupted the asteroid belt, tossing many asteroids closer to the Sun, where some collided with the terrestrial planets, including Earth. This asteroid bombardment may have been a significant source of organic matter and water for the early Earth.

Here is the original post:

New Animation Follows Long, Strange Trip Of Bennu