NASA mission to return with ‘pristine’ samples from asteroid ‘which could one day hit Earth’
A NASA mission is due to land in the US with “pristine” samples from an asteroid which scientists warned could one day hit Earth.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft gathered rocks and dust from the Bennu asteroid’s surface in 2020.
The spacecraft was launched in 2016 as part of NASA’s first mission to collect samples from an asteroid.
It will land with the sample in the Utah desert on Sunday.
NASA has said the “pristine material from Bennu” will offer generations of scientists a window into the time when the sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
Bennu, which was discovered by NASA in 1999, is thought to have been around within the first 10 million years of our solar system’s formation.
It has a diameter of around 490m (1,600ft), weighs 85.5 million tonnes, and is covered in boulders of rock.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touched the surface of Bennu and collected a sample before propelling off the asteroid in October 2020.
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Could Bennu ever hit Earth?
Bennu passes near Earth every six years and has had three close encounters with the planet in 1999, 2005, and 2011, NASA has said.
In 2021, scientists with the OSIRIS-REx team said the asteroid could possibly drift into the Earth’s orbit and hit the planet by September 2182.
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A mosaic of Bennu created using observations made by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Pic: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
There is a 1 in 2,700, or 0.037% chance that Bennu could hit Earth in that year, scientists said.
The asteroid would release 1,200 megatons of energy, around 24 times the energy of the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built, if it hit the Earth, according to IFLScience.
However, this is substantially less than the six-mile wide asteroid which killed the dinosaurs – which scientists said in 2019 was as powerful as 10 billion atomic bombs.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
A farmer who fell from a greenhouse roof during an anti-immigrant raid at a licensed cannabis facility in California this week has died of his injuries.
Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die as a result of Donald Trump’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raids.
His niece, Yesenia Duran, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family’s only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The United Food Workers said Mr Alanis had worked on the farm for 10 years.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” the union said in a recent statement on X.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it executed criminal search warrants at Glass House Farms facilities on Thursday.
Mr Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly fleeing agents before he fell around 30ft (9m) from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.
Agents arrested 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, the DHS said in a statement.
Mr Alanis was not among them, the agency said.
“This man was not in and has not been in CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or ICE custody,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30ft. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
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Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly “assaulting or resisting officers”, the DHS said, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.
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In a statement, Glass House, a licensed Cannabis grower, said immigration agents had valid warrants. It said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation.
“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” it added.
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