An Asteroid Landed Safely In Utah And Will Help Save The World

Who would've thought that Utah would lead the charge in saving humanity? We've all seen the movie 'Armageddon', right? Where a team of oil drillers save the planet? Something similar just happened in South Utah.

Utah becomes the landing site for a scientific breakthrough

The team over at NASA has been studying an asteroid known as "Bennu" and collecting samples thanks to their "OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) team" that had "a capsule of rocks and dust collected" according to NASA.gov.

On Sunday (9/24), the capsule containing the samples of Bennu finally landed in South Utah at the Utah Test and Training Range (South Part).

"Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team on a picture-perfect mission – the first American asteroid sample return in history – which will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation," said NASA Administrator, Bill Nelson.

"Not to mention, Bennu is a potentially hazardous asteroid, and what we learn from the sample will help us better understand the types of asteroids that could come our way."

PAUSE!

This asteroid can be HAZARDOUS? Look, we're all about advancing science, but can we "advance" science to blast this thing into oblivion?

There's no doubt that the data collected from this asteroid can help us "better understand" the elements and whatnot... but why aren't we studying how to eliminate the threat of getting eliminated from existence from one of these things?

Perhaps the entire thought of defending against asteroids is reserved for science fiction, but at least NASA knows how to collect samples from one. That's impressive, right?

Now - if we can just figure out how to land Bruce Willis and his team of oil rig workers on this thing, we'll be alright.