A small piece of an asteroid, scooped from space by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, is now on display at the University of Arizona’s Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum. This unique extraterrestrial rock sample is one of only three in the world available for public viewing, apart from those from the moon.
After a seven-year journey covering over 4 billion miles, the pebble from asteroid Bennu landed safely in a remote area of the Utah desert within a protective capsule. The museum, located in Arizona, joins Space Center Houston in Texas and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. as one of the few places where visitors can marvel at such a rare specimen.
Selected by NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the 121.6-gram sample is now open for public viewing. Museum director Violetta Wolf highlighted the significance of this asteroid sample, emphasizing that unlike meteorites, which have been altered by Earth’s conditions, this sample has remained untouched by our atmosphere or any earthly influences.
