🌌✨ Amazing Discovery from Space Dust ✨🌌

👨‍⚕️ Shariq Ali
📚 Valueversity

Did you know how scientists 🧑‍🔬 read the hidden stories 📖 of weather 🌦️ and geology ⛰️ in space? 🚀 NASA’s mission, called OSIRIS-REx, traveled to a small asteroid 🌑 named Bennu and brought soil 🪨 and rock particles back to Earth 🌍. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft took ⏳ seven years, and on September 24, 2023, its space capsule 🛰️ safely landed back on Earth 🌏.

When a team of scientists 🧪 — including a Pakistani-origin researcher, Zia ur Rahman 🇵🇰 — examined these particles under an electron microscope 🔬, they found many astonishing things 🤩:

Tiny craters ⚫ micrometer-sized, as if pricked by a needle 🪡

Glass-like frozen droplets ❄️💎 formed after explosive impacts 💥

Fine iron filaments like delicate strands of wire 🧵

Special surface layers altered by sunlight ☀️ and radiation 🌠

All this happens because micrometeorites ☄️ repeatedly strike the asteroid, while solar radiation 🔆 burns and transforms its surface. This natural process is called space weathering 🌌.

The most fascinating part 😲 is that Bennu’s color 🎨 changes over time — it first looks reddish 🔴, then slowly turns bluish 🔵. That’s the exact opposite of the Moon 🌙!

This research shows 🌟 us how alive and ever-changing the universe is ✨🌌. In the future 🔮, this knowledge may help us extract resources 🛠️ from asteroids and protect Earth 🌍💚 from potential collisions 💫.

👏🌺 Hats off to Zia ur Rahman and other NASA scientists 🌍🚀, whose research was recently published 📖 in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience under the title:
“Space weathering effects in Bennu asteroid samples.”