For tens of millions of years, the asteroid Bennu traveled through the vacuum of space, likely originating from our own solar system. But one small hunk of debris from the sample brought back to Earth — the first piece of an asteroid ever obtained by NASA — took its most recent trip on a subway car in Washington, D.C.
“The good people at [the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] can say they transported a piece of Bennu,” says Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where a new display containing a piece of the asteroid was unveiled on Nov. 3, 2023.
Scientists have already begun to analyze tiny pieces of this far-flung space rock — and initial studies have revealed the presence of both carbon and water, the building blocks of life. Now that the asteroid samples have arrived safely on Earth, the real work is just getting started.
