NASA’s Osiris-REx mission sends a pristine sample of asteroid back to Earth Sunday morning. If it lands successfully, this cupful-or-so of space rock could shed light on the solar system’s origins.
After traveling billions of miles for seven years to touch an asteroid and bring a sample home, NASA’s Osiris-REx mission has finally sent its precious contents hurtling toward Earth’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft successfully released a sample canister holding about a cupful asteroid rock on as it passed within 63,000 miles of the planet’s surface, officials announced Sunday morning.
In the canister should be roughly a coffee mug’s worth of rock and other material collected from the asteroid Bennu, which at the time was more than 200 million miles away.
