After a 7-year journey that covered nearly 4 billion miles (about 6.4 billion kilometers), NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft gently landed in the Utah desert on the morning of last September 24 with its precious cargo, where it returned. With a sample of the asteroid Bennu.
From Apollo to Perseverance
Chris Impey, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, said in a scientific article published by The Conversation website that this sample will help scientists learn about the composition of the solar system, and determine whether asteroids like Bennu contain the chemical components of life. However, based on the cost of NASA’s mission, the price of one gram of this asteroid sample amounts to $4.7 million, and despite that, it is not the most expensive material known to scientists.
According to what was stated in Chris Impey’s article, the first extraterrestrial material had returned to Earth through the “Apollo” program, as six “Apollo” missions between 1969 and 1972 brought about 382 kilograms of lunar samples, and the cost of one gram of this Moon rocks, $674,000.
NASA plans to bring samples from Mars in the early 2030s to see if any of them contain traces of ancient life, as it intends to bring 30 samples with a total weight of 450 grams. NASA’s Perseverance rover has already stored 10 of these samples.
The costs of these samples have increased because the mission is complex and includes many robots and spacecraft, so the cost of one gram of these samples can reach $24 million, i.e. 5 times the cost of the “Bennu” samples.
Free rocks
Professor Chris Impey points out that some space rocks cost nothing, as approximately 50 tons of free samples from the solar system fall to Earth every day. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere, but if they reach Earth they are called meteorites, and most of them come from asteroids.
Meteorites can become expensive because they can be difficult to identify and differentiate, as all rocks look the same to the viewer, unless they are an expert in geology.
Most of these meteorites are stony, called chondrites, and can be purchased online for 50 cents per gram. Chondrites differ from ordinary rocks in that they contain round grains called chondrules, which were formed in the form of molten droplets in space at the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Iron meteorites are characterized by a dark crust resulting from surface melting as they pass through the atmosphere, and an internal pattern of long mineral crystals. Its cost is at least $1.77 per gram.
As for plastites, they are iron stony meteorites covered with olivine when cut and polished. They have a color of a mixture of yellow and transparent green, and can cost about $35 per gram.
More than a few meteorites from the Moon and Mars have reached us. Nearly 600 of them were identified as coming from the moon, and the largest, weighing 1.8 kilograms, was sold for about $166 per gram. About 175 meteorites have also been identified as having come from Mars. Buying one of them costs about $388 per gram.
As Chris Impey says, researchers can determine the source of meteorites using their landing paths, just as experts can determine the source of moon and Martian rocks through their geology and minerals.
But these “free” samples begin to become contaminated as soon as they land on Earth, so it’s difficult to know whether any microbes inside are extraterrestrial or terrestrial.
Expensive items and metals
Some elements and minerals are expensive because they are rare. The simple elements in the periodic table have low prices. For an ounce (more than 28 grams), the cost of carbon is a third of a cent, the cost of iron is one cent, the cost of aluminum is 56 cents, and even mercury is less than a dollar. As for silver, it is $14 per ounce (50 cents per gram), and gold is $1,900 per ounce ($67 per gram). ).
There are 7 radioactive elements that are extremely rare in nature, and are so difficult to produce in the laboratory that they exceed the price of Mars samples brought by NASA. Polonium 209, for example, which is the most expensive of these elements, costs $49 billion per gram.
Gemstones can also be expensive, with high-quality emeralds costing 10 times the price of gold, and white diamonds 100 times the price of gold.
Some types of diamonds contain boron impurities that give them a vibrant blue color, and they have been found in a few mines around the world at a price of $19 million per gram, thus competing with the cost of Martian samples that will later come on a return trip from Mars.
In contrast, the most expensive synthetic materials are a small spherical “cage” of carbon with a nitrogen atom trapped inside. The atom inside the cage is very stable, so it can be used for timekeeping. The interfacial fullerenes are made of carbon that can be used to create highly accurate atomic clocks. It can cost $141 million per gram.
More expensive than everything
Antimatter exists in nature, but it is very rare, because when an antiparticle is created at any time, it quickly annihilates, emitting radiation.
The particle accelerator at the CERN facility can produce 10 million antiprotons per minute. This may seem like a lot, but at this rate, it would take billions of years and cost astronomical numbers per gram.
