Since leaving Bennu, the spacecraft has circled the sun twice so that it can be on the right trajectory to rendezvous with Earth. After launching in 2016, OSIRIS-REx began orbiting Bennu in 2018, collected the sample in 2020 and set off on its lengthy return trip to Earth in May 2021. The spacecraft has been on a seven-year journey. OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, is NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission. “Just as our meticulous planning and rehearsal prepared us to collect a sample from Bennu, we have honed our skills for sample recovery.” “I am immensely proud of the efforts our team has poured into this endeavor,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a statement. But if the capsule crash-lands and pops open, the sample could become contaminated. The mission’s original goal was to retrieve a pristine asteroid sample. The capsule will land in the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. Years of hard work by thousands of people have led to the moment when the Bennu sample arrives on Earth.ĭuring the spring and summer, teams practiced recovering the sample capsule and ran through all of the scenarios, both good and bad, that could happen on reentry day. It’s not every day a spacecraft releases a capsule carrying a rare asteroid sample above the planet and intends to deliver it safely to a specific landing site. “Pristine material from asteroid Bennu will help shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps even on how life on Earth began.” ![]() “We are now mere weeks away from receiving a piece of solar system history on Earth, and this successful drop test ensures we’re ready,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. It's about one-third of a mile (500 meters) wide. ![]() Bennu is a rubble-pile asteroid shaped like a spinning top, composed of rocks bound together by gravity.
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