Open link in next tab
Special delivery! Biggest-ever haul of asteroid dust and rock returns to Earth
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02954-2?
Samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission excite scientists with their potential to reveal secrets of the Solar System.
A saucer-shaped capsule parachuted down gently in the Utah desert today, after a years-long journey through space. Its cargo is a precious collection of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu — the first time NASA has ever brought pieces of this type of celestial object back to Earth.
Meanwhile, the rest of the OSIRIS spacecraft continues to fly through space after dropping off its sample-return capsule. It is headed to study Apophis, an asteroid with a different, ‘stony’, chemical composition that will whizz dramatically close past Earth in 2029.