For decades, rockhounds gathered each year at Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. Wielding crowbars and pickaxes, they hunted for showy deposits of minerals such as halite, trona, calcite, and dolomite.
For decades, rockhounds gathered each year at Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. Wielding crowbars and pickaxes, they hunted for showy deposits of minerals such as halite, trona, calcite, and dolomite. Planetary scientists from NASA and several other institutions are finding many of the same water-soluble minerals, though their tools and destinations are worlds apart.
In September 2016, NASA launched a van-sized spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, that traveled billions of miles to reach a small diamond-shaped asteroid named Bennu. Scientists think that this “rubble pile” asteroid, which crosses Earth’s orbit every 6 years, formed from fragments of a larger asteroid that broke apart between 1 and 2 billion years ago after a cataclysmic collision.
In September 2020, OSIRIS-REx briefly touched down on Bennu’s surface, collected 4.3 ounces of crumbly regolith, and stowed it safely before returning to Earth. The video below shows what the lumpy asteroid looked like as OSIRIS-REx approached it in December 2018.
Read More: NASA earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Lauren Dauphin/NASA
