NASA Receives First Samples of Asteroids on Earth

Three years ago, a capsule containing material recovered from asteroids in space made a safe return to Earth. During a visit past Earth on Sunday, the capsule was released by NASA’s Osiris-Rex probe. The capsule landed in a closed military zone in the Utah desert, and a parachute helped it to surface. According to NASA authorities, the capsule arrived as scheduled and showed no signs of damage. It had been inside the U.S. Defense Department’s makeshift clean room for two hours after landing. The samples were being transported by air to NASA’s Johnson Space Center located in Houston, Texas, in a sealed container. After that, it will undergo a thorough examination in a brand-new, specially created lab. Lead scientist Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona is in charge of the research. After the successful sample retrieval, he informed reporters he “broke into tears” from emotion.

According to Lauretta, his team is eager to get started reviewing the information. “I think the real science is only getting started.” Lauretta will travel to Texas with the samples. The samples, according to NASA’s director of planetary science Lori Glaze, will be a “treasure” for study “for years and years to come.” In 2016, Osiris-Rex set out on its mission. Two years later, it made it to Bennu, located roughly 320 million kilometers from Earth.

October 2020 marked the end of the spacecraft’s asteroid sampling operation. For a brief moment, its robotic arm made contact with the asteroid Bennu, creating dust and rock samples for collection. Scientists reported at the time that Osiris-Rex had retrieved significantly more material from asteroids than they had predicted. In 2020, NASA released a report stating that certain materials had leaked and drifted off while being collected. The only other nation to return asteroid samples from orbit is Japan. Much less material was collected as a result of their gathering activities. Aside from material that NASA has already returned from the moon, the rock and dust samples that arrived on Sunday are the largest space samples to reach Earth.