Watch the key moments from NASA’s first-ever sample return mission, from spotting the capsule streaking across the sky to its arrival in a clean room.
NASA has succeeded in bringing back to Earth a capsule containing samples gathered from an asteroid — a first for the space agency.
The sample return capsule (SRC) from the OSIRIS-REx mission landed at 8:52 a.m. MT (10:52 a.m. ET) on Sunday in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.
“A journey of a billion miles to asteroid Bennu and back has come to an end, marking America’s first sample return mission of its kind and opening a time capsule to our ancient solar system,” the live-stream commentator announced as the capsule touched down.
It’s been an incredible journey, too, with the spacecraft launching just over seven years ago on an ambitious mission to put a spacecraft on a distant asteroid, collect samples, and them get them all the way back to Earth.
After being dropped off by the spacecraft some 60,000 miles (96,000 km) from Earth, a live stream showed the SRC streaking across the sky off the coast of California as it decelerated from 27,650 mph (44,500 kph) to just 11 mph (18 kph) at touchdown.
A helicopter camera then tracked the capsule as its orange-colored parachute slowed it down during the final descent.
Only minutes away from landing! The #OSIRISREx main parachute has deployed at about 5,050 feet (1540m) to slow down the speed of the sample capsule. pic.twitter.com/2XzvRMKshz
— NASA (@NASA) September 24, 2023
A short while later, a mission operator confirmed the SRC’s landing.
