How NASA's OSIRIS-REx could help usher in the age of asteroid mining

摘要

NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx space probe in September and sent it on a roughly two-year mission to the Earth-approaching carbonaceous asteroid Bennu. The space probe will examine Bennu at length before extracting a couple of ounces of dirt from the asteroid and returning it to Earth. If all goes well, OSIRIS-REx will deliver its sample to Earth in September 2023. OSIRIS-REx will seek to answer a number of scientific questions about the origin of life on Earth, since Bennu is thought to contain carbon, perhaps in the form of organic material. Some scientists speculate that bodies from space, such as Bennu, collided with Earth, seeding it with the raw materials of life billions of years ago.