A fragment of an asteroid described by the US space agency NASA as the most dangerous rock in the solar system has arrived in Great Britain for study.
Tiny pieces of rock and dust from the object known as Bennu will be exposed to a series of tests at the Natural History Museum and the Open University, Manchester and Oxford universities.
It's a small, but quite sufficient sample, says Professor Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum.
"One hundred milligrams of divot," she said, describing it to the BBC.
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A sample was collected from the surface of the 500-meter-wide asteroid Benua in 2020 by NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft, and then, two months ago, it was sent in a capsule to the Utah desert.
The American agency wants to know more about this hilly object, among other things, because it has a certain chance of hitting our planet in the next 300 years.
But more than that, the sample is likely to provide fresh insights into the formation of the solar system 4,6 billion years ago.
This new knowledge will be found in the chemical composition of the material from Benue, which has remained largely unchanged over time.
Hundreds of scientists from all over the world are participating in the investigation.
The Natural History Museum team, for example, has specific expertise in X-ray diffraction techniques.
These will reveal the types of minerals present and their quantity.
"We are unusual in that we have X-ray diffraction equipment that allows us to do experiments that others may not be able to do," explains the Museum's Dr. Ashley King.
"We have an amazing collection of minerals, which means we have all the standards and can make comparisons to help us in our calculations."
Dr King has a number of instruments at his disposal at the west London institution, but he will also use the largest X-ray diffraction machine in the country - the Diamond Light Source at Harwell, Oxfordshire.
The size of a football stadium, the Diamond Synchotron produces bright X-rays that represent a new level of sensitivity and resolution.
Early analysis by NASA, assisted by Dr. King, showed that the black, alien material from Benue was packed with carbon and water-rich minerals.
That's a good sign.
It is theorized that asteroids rich in (organic) carbon and water like Bennu brought key components to the young Earth system.
It's potentially how we got the water in the oceans and some of the compounds necessary to give rise to life.
One hundred milligrams that the UK got doesn't sound like a lot.
The largest fragments are less than 2 millimeters in diameter; some of the smallest are barely visible to the naked eye.
"It's only one teaspoon, but if you imagine a teaspoon of sugar and how many individual grains are in it - you know we're going to study that material grain by grain," said Professor Russell, who leads the planetary materials group at the museum.
"There could be a lifetime's worth of work ahead of us."
NASA has a lot more in store.
Exactly how much, she's not sure.
She still hadn't managed to fully open the Osiris-Rex sample container.
The plate that serves as a cover cannot be removed from it.
The agency's curatorial team at the Johnson Space Center in Texas must order new tools for the job.
The British 100 milligrams were taken from the 70 grams that fell out of the container as it was placed in the capsule for return to Earth.
Seventy grams is actually ten grams more than the minimum necessary for the mission when it was launched, so they are in no rush to release the rest which could add another 200 grams to the total.
Scientists in the UK and around the world hope to be able to report the early findings at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March.
It is also expected that two major scientific studies will be published at that time or shortly thereafter in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science.
NASA plans to archive most of the Benue sample to preserve it for future generations - for scientists who may not yet be born to work on it in laboratories that don't exist today, with instruments yet to be invented.
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