NASA's OSIRIS-REx Returns Asteroid Bennu Samples To Earth

OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer), released its sample on Sept. 24, while it was about 101,000 km above Earth. The capsule contains some 250 grams of rocks and other material from Bennu, that could help answer some of scientists' most burning questions about the origins of life on Earth and the early days of our solar system.

Teams with NASA and the U.S. Air Force successfully recovered the space capsule and samples in a mid-morning operation at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in the arid Utah desert. OSIRIS-REx traveled for over 4 billion miles to reach Bennu and make the journey home.

As it descended through Earth's atmosphere, OSIRIS-REx reached speeds of up to 27,000 mph and its heatshield experienced temperatures as high as 5,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

The capsule deployed its main parachute at an altitude of about 20,000 feet, four times higher than expected at 5,000 feet, but it appeared to land safely. Officials with NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems, which built OSIRIS-REx, told reporters in the post-landing conference that drogue chute likely deployed, but was just not seen on cameras monitoring the descent.

As the sample return capsule floated down to the desert floor of the U.S. Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range here, the capsule cooled down enough so that U.S. Air Force personnel could approach after locating it. 

The descent from the edge of the atmosphere to the desert sands took under 10 minutes in total to end a 4 billion-mile journey. The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016, arrived at Bennu in 2018 and collected samples of the asteroid in 2020.

"The bottom line is we landed. When the main parachute came out, that was the moment I was waiting for," Mike Moreau, OSIRIS-REx recovery team lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the briefing. "The drogue's on top of the main parachute, so it all had to come out," he added.

"Touchdown for science!" said Jim Garvin, chief scientist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, from the landing site during a live broadcast. "For the first time in history, we brought goodies back home from this kind of object. This is so huge and we're all breathing a big sigh of relief."

"Boy, did we stick the landing," Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission, said in a post-landing briefing.

An early examination by recovery teams found that the capsule was intact and suffered no breaches during landing. It was then hooked up to a helicopter via a longline and airlifted to a temporary cleanroom set up at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground. Once secure inside the facility, the capsule was opened, and the canister inside that contains the precious sample of asteroid Bennu will be prepared for transport once again.

The asteroid material will next be loaded onto an aircraft and flown to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas where a newly-built facility is waiting for it, the agency's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division. 

From there, the sample will be divided up among different scientific institutions and world space agencies. NASA will keep 70% of the sample at JSC where it will analyze it for years to come. Another 25% will be shared between over 200 scientists at 35 different facilities. 4% will be given to the Canadian Space Agency, and another 0.5% will be given to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

OSIRIS-REx is NASA's first to collect an asteroid sample, but JAXA has two such missions under its belt. That agency's Hayabusa 1 collected materials from asteroid Itokawa and returned them in 2010, and Hayabusa 2 returned sampled of asteroid Ryugu in 2020. The successful landing and recovery of the asteroid Bennu samples marks the end of a seven-year mission.

When the spacecraft arrived at Bennu in 2018, it found an asteroid resembling more of a pile of gravel and rubble than a solid rock. Scientists with the mission then had to rethink the plan for the probe's landing, which required reprogramming the spacecraft to land in an area less than one quarter of the size of its original intended landing site.

WATCH the return of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.