OSIRIS-Rex’s capsule containing precious samples from the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu landed safely in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City at 10:52 a.m. EDT (8:52 a.m. MDT) on September 24, 2023. Within an hour and a half, the capsule was transported by helicopter to a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the training range, where it now is connected to a continuous flow of nitrogen.
The Bennu sample — an estimated 250 grams — will be transported in its unopened canister by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on September 25, 2023.
Curation scientists there will disassemble the canister, extract and weigh the sample, create an inventory of the rocks and dust, and, over time, distribute pieces of Bennu to scientists worldwide.
The delivery of an asteroid sample went according to plan thanks to the massive effort of hundreds of people who remotely directed the spacecraft’s journey since it launched on September 8, 2016.
The OSIRIS-Rex team guided it to arrival at Bennu on December 3, 2018, through the search for a safe sample-collection site between 2019 and 2020, sample collection on October 20, 2020, and during the return trip home starting on May 10, 2021.
The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, September 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Image credit: NASA / Keegan Barber.
“Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team on a picture-perfect mission — the first American asteroid sample return in history — which will deepen our understanding of the origin of our Solar System and its formation,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
“Not to mention, Bennu is a potentially hazardous asteroid, and what we learn from the sample will help us better understand the types of asteroids that could come our way.”
“With OSIRIS-REx, Psyche launch in a couple of weeks, DART’s one year anniversary, and Lucy’s first asteroid approach in November, Asteroid Autumn is in full swing.”
“These missions prove once again that NASA does big things. Things that inspire us and unite us. Things that show nothing is beyond our reach when we work together.”
A detailed view of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule. The capsule is the size of a large truck tire. Image credit: Lockheed Martin Space.
“Today marks an extraordinary milestone not just for the OSIRIS-REx team but for science as a whole,” said OSIRIS-Rex principal investigator Dr. Dante Lauretta, a researcher at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
“Successfully delivering samples from Bennu to Earth is a triumph of collaborative ingenuity and a testament to what we can accomplish when we unite with a common purpose.”
“But let’s not forget — while this may feel like the end of an incredible chapter, it’s truly just the beginning of another.”
“We now have the unprecedented opportunity to analyze these samples and delve deeper into the secrets of our Solar System.”
About 20 minutes after the sample capsule’s release, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to the near-Earth asteroid Apophis and was renamed OSIRIS-APEX.
Apophis will come within 32,200 km (20,000 miles) of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029.
OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid’s close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid’s orbit, spin rate, and surface.
