Enlarge / A look inside the clean room where OSIRIS-REx’s samples will be stored. (credit: NASA)
Christmas Day for scientists who study asteroids is coming in just two months when a small spacecraft carrying material from a distant rubble pile will land in a Utah desert.
The return of the OSIRIS-REx sample container on September 24 will cap the primary mission to capture material from an asteroid—in this case, the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu—and return some of its pebbles and dust to Earth.
It has been a long time coming. This mission launched seven years ago and has been in the planning and development phase for over a decade. To say the scientists who have fought for and executed this mission are anxious and excited is an understatement. But there is an additional frisson with OSIRIS-REx, as scientists are not entirely sure what they’ve been able to pull away from the asteroid.
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