NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made its historic touchdown on asteroid Bennu Tuesday, retrieving a sample from the space rock that will be returned to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx reached …
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made its historic touchdown on asteroid Bennu Tuesday, retrieving a sample from the space rock that will be returned to Earth. OSIRIS-REx reached the surface of Bennu at 6:11 p.m. EDT in a mission that NASA says will help unlock the secrets of the solar system. The “tag” or sample collection, was complete at 6:11 p.m. EDT and the spacecraft left the asteroid’s surface. The Lockheed Martin-built van-sized spacecraft successfully reached a tennis court-sized crater named Nightingale. Boulders as big as buildings loomed over the touchdown zone. OSIRIS-REx used a robotic arm to grab the sample from Bennu, which is about 200 million miles from Earth.
