The sample that OSIRIS-REx took from the asteroid Bennu continues to give us new information about the past of this small space rock and the early Solar System. After the sample was opened a few weeks ago, signs began to appear that Bennu may have had a wet past. There is now another finding to add to that.

Researchers have said that magnesium-sodium phosphate has been found. It came as a surprise because the ship hadn’t seen it from orbit. It makes the case for Bennu being a broken piece of a much bigger, primitive ocean world even stronger.

The Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa-2 picked up a piece of an asteroid from Ryugu and found phosphate minerals on it. Earth rocks have also had them in them. But the Bennu sample stands out because the grains are so pure and big.

An asteroid called Bennu may have been wet in the past because of the phosphates and other elements and compounds that are found on it. Dante Lauretta, co-lead author of the paper and chief scientist for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said this in a statement. “Bennu might have lived in a wetter world in the past.” But this hypothesis needs to be looked into more.

One of the people who worked on the study and is in charge of OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said, “OSIRIS-REx gave us exactly what we hoped for: a large, clean asteroid sample rich in nitrogen and carbon from a world that used to be wet.”

For many reasons, the team thinks of Bennu as a part of the ocean world. For example, serpentinite is present. This is a type of rock that forms when hot rocks meet water, like on Earth’s mid-ocean ridges. Additionally, a lot of the substances that dissolve appear to have moved with the help of water. The fact that phosphates are real can be added to that list.

The team suggests a body with a lot of liquid water, maybe with a hard or icy exterior. A good example is Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon. Bennu’s parent body would be about 250 kilometers (155 miles) across, which is half of it. In the past, objects have struck the 1,630-foot-wide Bennu, which measures 500 meters.

“We are still thinking of ways to test [the wet parent body hypothesis].” But, according to Professor Lauretta, it’s the most likely place where these rocks formed. He said this in an exclusive chat in March.

The sample is still being sent to labs in the US and around the world. The valuable material was being moved around for a long time before it arrived. The team shared 58 results from the first study in March, and every week there are new discoveries. It will be possible to get even more science as the number of scientists grows.

“The rocks from Bennu are enticingly beautiful,” said Harold Connolly, who is the co-lead author of the study and a sample scientist for the OSIRIS-REx mission at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “Every week, the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team finds new, sometimes surprising information that helps us understand where Earth-like planets came from and how they changed over time.”

The study is written up in the Meteoritics & Planetary Science magazine.

Living in space nonstop for almost 24 years, with astronauts and cosmonauts living on the ship since October 10, 2000, when astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev took their first steps on board the International Space Station (ISS).

There will come a time when everything good has to end, and NASA is now making plans for that time to come. The US space agency said on Wednesday that it has chosen SpaceX to design and build the Deorbit Vehicle. This vehicle will be used to safely bring the space station down to Earth when its time is up.

If the US Deorbit Vehicle is chosen for the International Space Station, it will help NASA and its partners make sure that the end of station operations is a safe and responsible one in low Earth orbit. “This decision also backs up NASA’s plans for future commercial destinations and lets people keep using space close to Earth,” said Ken Bowersox, who is the associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “For the benefit of everyone, the orbital laboratory is still a model for science, exploration, and working together in space.”

The first parts of the ISS were sent into space in 1998. When their work is done in 2030, they will have been in space for two years longer than they were supposed to. The skeleton of the space station is made up of these parts, which means the ISS can’t go on after 2030.

“A lot of the space station can be fixed or replaced in space, and other parts can be sent back to Earth to be fixed and then sent back into space again.” “These parts include the science hardware, communications gear, life support gear, and solar arrays,” NASA says. “However, the primary structure of the station, such as the crewed modules and the truss structures, cannot be repaired or replaced practically.”

The space station moves in and out of sunlight, and spaceships dock and undock from it. This puts stress on the structures.

“These forces were accounted for in the original 30-year structural life estimate, and while NASA’s flown experience indicates the actual forces imparted to the station have been less than originally forecast, there is still a finite lifetime available in the primary structure,” said NASA.

As the space station has aged, leaks have started to appear, even though it has worked very well for a long time. Five space agencies worked together on an amazing project to run a lab high above our heads at about 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). NASA is now planning for the end of the project. SpaceX will run the project, which could be worth $843 million, but NASA will own and run the Deorbit Vehicle and mission to take the old space station out of orbit.

If you don’t want to drink a bunch of chemicals that could be harmful, keep your water bottle out of the sun. Plastic water bottles that are left out in the sun break down and release many different types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

VOCs are chemicals that evaporate quickly at room temperature. They are found in a lot of different products, like paints, cleaners, fuels, and solvents. They’re also made of plastic, like those used to make water bottles and food trucks. Many of them are safe, but some may be bad for your health in the short and long term.

In the most recent study, UV-A light and sunlight were used to test six different kinds of plastic water bottles in China. They discovered that this process let out a wide range of VOCs, such as acids, alcohols, aldehydes, and alkanes.

Some signs pointed to “highly toxic” VOCs, such as n-hexadecane, which is known to cause cancer.

A single sip of contaminated water doesn’t pose much of a health risk, but the researchers found that long-term exposure may pose a greater risk.

“Our results are strong proof that plastic bottles can release harmful chemicals into the air when they are exposed to sunlight.” “Consumers need to be aware of these risks, especially in places where bottled water is left out in the sun for long periods of time,” said Dr. Huase Ou, lead researcher from China’s Jinan University’s Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health.

However, the researchers were quick to point out that the risk seems to be pretty low since the bottle only releases a small amount of chemicals.

“Given that a container weighs about 20 grams on average, the VOCs that were released from a single container were only a few nanograms.” So, even after long-term exposure, opening a bottle and drinking water from it doesn’t pose many health risks to people, the study’s authors write in the conclusion.

The bottles in the study were all made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is one of the most common types of plastic. However, the VOC composition and concentration of the different bottles were very different. The different production methods and additives seem to have something to do with this.

Most likely, the chemicals leaked out of the bottle because of a process called photodegradation. This is when light breaks down the structure of the plastic.

There are more things than just sunlight that you should think about when it comes to your plastic bottle’s “health.” A study from the past found that leaving water in a plastic bottle for just one day could let hundreds of chemicals get into your drink. Several of these chemicals are thought to be harmful to health, such as those that cause cancer or mess with the hormone system (endocrine disruptors).

In the same way, there is some evidence that heating plastic bottles might not be a good idea. A study done in 2020 found that the sterilization process recommended by the World Health Organization put between 1.3 and 16.2 million microplastic particles per liter into child bottles.

In the 21st century, plastic is found everywhere, from penises to ice in Antarctica. It was once thought to be mostly harmless, but it’s becoming clearer that it’s having a bad effect on us and the planet, and we’re only just beginning to understand how bad it is.

The study was published in the magazine Eco-Environment & Health.