NASA's craft carrying largest-ever samples of asteroid Bennu lands on back on Earth

livemint.com:

NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) seven-year space probe's voyage came to a climactic end on Sunday when the US space agency's first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert. The capsule was carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected. Notably, Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples, gathered about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid. Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250 grams) of dust from its rocky surface.

According to NASA scientists, the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but won’t know for sure until the container is opened. Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much and rocks jammed the container’s lid during collection three years ago. The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon.

Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed. Osiris-Rex, the mothership, rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed rubble from the small roundish space rock in 2020.