WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA's Osiris Rex spacecraft has discovered components of water on a relatively nearby skyscraper in the size of a skyscraper, scientists said on Monday, suggesting it could provide evidence of the origins of life on Earth.
The Osiris Rex, which flew 19 kilometers from Pino, about 2.25 million kilometers from Earth, last week found traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules - part of the water structure, and thus the possibility of life - part of the surface of a rocky asteroid .
The probe was launched in a mission to bring asteroid samples to Earth for 2016.
The asteroid Pino, which is about 500 meters across the Sun, is about the same distance as the Earth and the Sun. There are fears among scientists that the asteroid Pino may have hit Earth at the end of the 22nd century.
"We found water-rich minerals from the start of the solar system, which is exactly like the specimen we went to find and bring to Earth," said Dante Loretta, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, principal investigator of the mission, Osiris Rex.
Asteroids are among the remnants of the solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago.
Scientists believe that the collision of asteroids and comets with Earth at its earliest beginnings may have led to organic compounds and water, giving the planet the seed of life. The atomic analysis of the asteroid samples may provide key evidence supporting this hypothesis.
"When the vehicle brings the samples to Earth in 2023, scientists will get a treasure trove of new information about the history and evolution of our solar system," said Amy Simon, a scientist at the Goddard Aviation Center of NASA, Maryland.
Osiris Rex will approach the asteroid Pino 1.9 km later this month to enter the asteroid's gravity zone and analyze its topography.
From there, the craft will gradually begin to reduce its orbit around the asteroid to only two meters from its surface, and then its robot arm can extract a sample of the asteroid by July 2020.
The asteroid then begins to return to Earth, and a capsule bearing an asteroid sample will be launched to land in a canopy in the Utah desert in September 2023.
