OSIRIS-REx Returns a Sample from an Asteroid

On September 24, 2023, a sample return capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft parachuted into the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The landing completed a seven-year expedition across interplanetary space to extract material directly from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid. Japan's Hayabusa missions had previously returned particles from asteroids, but this landing delivered the first asteroid sample collected by NASA.

Bennu, formerly designated 1999 RQ36, was chosen for study because scientists hoped material from its surface could reveal whether asteroids that struck Earth billions of years ago delivered water and other ingredients for life to the planet. The spacecraft reached the asteroid on December 3, 2018, and within a week mission scientists announced that its instruments had detected hydrated minerals across the surface. The finding suggested that Bennu's material had interacted with water at some point and that the larger parent body it came from may once have held liquid water.