The Osiris-Rex spacecraft delivered the sample capsule during a close encounter with Earth from a distance of 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers).
The seven-year space probe mission of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) came to an astonishing conclusion on Sunday as the US space agency's first asteroid rocks recovered from the depths of space dropped in Utah.
The largest asteroid samples ever gathered were being transported by a spacecraft to Earth. Notably, Japan collected around a teaspoon in two asteroid expeditions, making it the only other country to return with asteroid samples.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft delivered the sample capsule during a close encounter with Earth from a distance of 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers). Four hours later, when the main ship was pursuing another asteroid, the little capsule touched down in a hidden military field.
The spacecraft dropped on the asteroid Bennu four years following its 2016 takeoff and gathered almost nine ounces (250 grams) of material from its rocky ground. NASA scientists estimate that the capsule contains at least a cup's worth of debris from the Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid, but they cannot be certain until the package is unsealed.
When the spacecraft gathered up too much debris during retrieval three years earlier and debris clogged the container's lid, some overflowed and drifted away. The largest harvest from outside the moon was delivered on Sunday and consists of rocks and dust.
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The samples, which are well-preserved elements from the beginning of our solar system's existence 4.5 billion years ago, will aid researchers in understanding how Earth and life developed. The mothership, Osiris-Rex, launched on the $1 billion mission in 2016.
After traveling to Bennu for two years, it collected debris from the small, oblong space asteroid in 2020 via a long stick vacuum. The spaceship had traveled 4 billion miles (6.2 billion kilometers) by the time it arrived back on Earth.
The samples will be transported to an updated lab at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston in tomorrow morning. Numerous kilograms (pounds) of moon rocks collected by the crew of Apollo over fifty years ago are already kept in the structure.
Bennu, which has a diameter of roughly 500 meters (1,640 feet), is thought to be rich in carbon, a component of life on Earth, and to possess water molecules that have been trapped in minerals. In October, NASA intends to do a public display.
Bennu is around the size of the Empire State Building and resembles a spinning top. It is presently circling the sun at a distance of 50 million miles (81 million kilometers) from Earth. It is thought to be a shattered piece of a bigger asteroid.
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(With inputs from agencies)
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