On Sunday, NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission will deliver a sample it collected from asteroid Bennu, completing a seven-year journey that could provide insights into how life originated on Earth.
When the
’s first asteroid sample collected in space to Earth has been years in the making. Here’s a look at the mission milestones so far — and what lies ahead. A spacecraft’s cosmic tour Ex surveyed the asteroid in its entirety to determine the best location to collect a sample. Bennu, a rubble-pile asteroid shaped like a spinning top, is about one-third of a mile wide and composed of rocks bound together by gravity. The views of Bennu provided by the spacecraft afforded the mission team unprecedented insights about the asteroid, which included the discovery of water ice locked within Bennu’s rocks and carbon in a form largely associated with biology.
Ex disturbed and altered the surface of the asteroid during the collection event. The before and after photos showed some intriguing differences created by the sample collection and the firing of the spacecraft’s thrusters after it pushed away from the asteroid, including moving and rearranging large boulders on the asteroid’s surface. Returning to Earth Since bidding Bennu farewell in May 2021,
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