The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that visited the distant Bennu asteroid and scraped-up a sample in October 2020 will deliver that sample next week as it swings by Earth.
Bennu—first discovered in 1999—takes 1.2 Earth-years to orbit the sun. Its orbital path intercepts Earth’s and it’s thought to have a 1-in-1,800 chance of impacting Earth between 2178 and 2290, with the greatest risk being on 24 September 2182, according to a paperAt least 0.12 lbs./60g of material were collected on October 20, 2020 by OSIRIS-REx, which at the time was over 200 million miles from Earth. The spacecraft left Earth in late 2016.
Its capture of the material—during a brief touchdown for just six seconds on Bennu’s surface—was immortalized in 82 images stitched together to create aThis is NASA’s first-ever sample return mission—aside from moon landings— something successfully done so far only by Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions.... [+]
capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, Tuesday, July 18, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will return to Earth on September 24th, landing under parachute at the Utah Test and Training Range.Utah Test and Training RangeThe capsule should enter Earth’s atmosphere at 7:42 a.m. PDT.
It will then journey to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the sample will be documented, divided and distributed to scientists worldwide for likely decades of analysis.
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