Watch as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brings asteroid samples back to Earth

Seven years after the OSIRIS-REx mission launched, a capsule containing rocks captured from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 will land in Utah on Sunday morning.

Today marks the final step of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched in September 2016, as a small capsule containing a sample of the asteroid Bennu descends through the Earth’s atmosphere, landing in the Utah desert for NASA to collect and analyze. This is similar to the method used to collect particles from a comet with the Stardust mission that dropped off a sample in Utah in 2006.

The audacious mission flew the spacecraft to a small, near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and attempted something that hadn’t been done before by orbiting the asteroid, getting close enough to scrape up some material and collect it, and then returning to Earth with the sample. NASA TV will stream coverage of the sample return on its YouTube channel starting at 10AM ET today.

After OSIRIS-REx launched, it employed a slingshot maneuver to sweep around the earth and use its gravity to fling it towards Bennu — you know, like the time The Enterprise whipped around the sun to go back in time and save the whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. OSIRIS-REx collected even more than the 60 grams of Bennu material NASA was aiming for when it made the scoop in 2020 before starting its trip back to Earth in 2021.

An animation of still images showing the OSIRIS-REx grabbing its rock sample from Bennu.Image: NASA

Follow along here for all of the updates about the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return.

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• 

  TODAY, An hour ago

  Wes Davis

  NASA is now recovering the capsule containing the Bennu asteroid sample.

  A team is preparing to take the OSIRIS-REx capsule back to NASA’s portable clean lab to collect the Bennu asteroid sample it gathered three years ago, according to NASA’s live coverage.

  Team members have also placed flags in the area to note potentially interesting environmental samples to collect in the area around the capsule for later examination.

  

  The NASA recovery team examines the OSIRIS-REx capsule prior to beginning official recovery operations.Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
• 

  TODAY, An hour ago

  Wes Davis

  OSIRIS-REx is safe for approach.

  Lockheed Martin crew checked it for dangerous heat, off-gassing, and unexploded ordinance at the site of the capsule to make sure it poses no danger to the team recovering the OSIRIS-REx samples.

  They’ve now declared it safe to approach, so NASA will now prepare to pick it up.

  

  Lockheed Martin safety team members check the capsule to ensure it’s safe to approach.Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
• 

  TODAY, Two hours ago

  Wes Davis

  The OSIRIS-REx capsule has been located.

  The OSIRIS-REx helicopter team has confirmed the location of the capsule containing the Bennu asteroid sample. The capsule touched down at about 10:52AM ET.

  The first helicopter has landed and the team is beginning recovery of the capsule as soon as they can verify there is no danger of injury from unexploded ordinance.

  

  The OSIRIS-REx capsule sitting in the Utah desert.Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
• 

  TODAY, Two hours ago

  The OSIRIS-REx capsule has touched down.

  The “time capsule to our ancient solar system” from the OSIRIS-REx mission has officially touched down in the Utah desert.

  NASA’s live coverage notes it landed about three minutes sooner than expected. The team is now heading to it with helicopters to begin the process of gathering the samples.

• 

  TODAY, Two hours ago

  The parachute is deployed.

  From the NASA TV live coverage, OSIRIS-REx has deployed its parachute about 5,000 feet above the Utah testing training range.

  The capsule is now falling slowly to the earth with samples from the Bennu asteroid. It should land in just a few minutes.
• 

  TODAY, Two hours ago

  What’s next for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft?

  After the Bennu sample capsule’s release, NASA renamed the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft will meet up with a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis.

  Apophis will miss the Earth by about 20,000 miles in 2029 — that’s closer than our own Moon.

  OSIRIS-APEX will study the gravitational effects of the close pass on “the asteroid’s orbit, spin rate, and surface.”

  OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Departs for New Mission – OSIRIS-REx Mission

  [blogs.nasa.gov]

• 

  TODAY, Two hours ago

  Wes Davis

  Here’s what NASA is actually doing right now with OSIRIS-REx.

  NASA put together a rendered preview to show what’s happening during today’s return of a sample scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, showing what the delivery and release of the OSIRIS-REx capsule looks like.
• 

  May 11, 2021

  Joey Roulette

  NASA’s asteroid-punching spacecraft begins its trek back home

  

  NASA

  The NASA spacecraft that snatched a sample of rocks from the distant Bennu asteroid last year fired up a suite of thrusters on Monday and committed to its two-year journey back home. The maneuver kicks the minivan-sized spacecraft, dubbed Osiris-REx, onto a winding cosmic path around the Sun and toward Earth’s orbit. When it returns to Earth in 2023, it’ll toss a capsule packed with asteroid samples through the atmosphere somewhere over Utah.

  The spacecraft’s Asteroid Departure Maneuver (ADM) was no sweat for the Osiris-REx team, but it marked a significant step towards the return of the first pristine cache of asteroid samples in NASA’s history. Spacecraft engineers inside a Lockheed Martin center in Littleton, Colorado confirmed the seven-minute thruster firing began at 4PM ET Monday and celebrated success shortly after.

• 

  Oct 29, 2020

  Loren Grush

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe successfully stores small sample of asteroid rocks in its belly

  

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully stored a small cache of rocks that it grabbed from the surface of an asteroid named Bennu last week, sealing the pebbles inside the vehicle’s belly. The asteroid particles will now remain inside the spacecraft over the next three years, as OSIRIS-REx makes its way back to Earth.

  OSIRIS-REx grabbed the sample on October 20th of last week, more than four years after launching from Earth on its mission to touch an asteroid. Using a thin robotic arm, the vehicle lightly tapped the asteroid Bennu, stirring up rocks on the surface and pushing some of the pebbles up into the spacecraft

• 

  Oct 24, 2020

  Loren Grush

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx was so good at grabbing asteroid rocks that they’re overflowing

  

  Image: NASA

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft did its job a little too well on Tuesday, when it tried to scoop up a handful of rocks from an asteroid named Bennu more than 200 million miles from Earth. The vehicle actually grabbed too much material with its robotic arm, jamming the lid at the end of the arm open — and letting part of the asteroid sample escape out into space.

  “We were almost a victim of our own success here,” said Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission at the University of Arizona, in a press conference

• 

  Oct 22, 2020

  Loren Grush

  Stunning images show NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stirring up rocks on an asteroid

  

  NASA shared astonishing images of its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touching an asteroid yesterday, revealing how the vehicle stirred up rocks and debris on the object’s surface when it made contact. The goal of the tap was to collect a sample of material from the asteroid, but the engineers behind the spacecraft say they won’t for sure if they collected anything until this weekend, when they spin the vehicle and measure how much material is inside.

  However, the OSIRIS-REx team feels confident that they got something. “Bottom line is from analysis of the images that we’ve gotten down so far, is that the sampling event went really well, as good as we could have imagined it would,” Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, said during a press conference. “And I think the chances that there’s material inside… have gone way up way up based on the analysis of the images.

• 

  Oct 21, 2020

  Loren Grush

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully taps an asteroid in attempt to grab a sample

  

  Image: Lockheed Martin

  This afternoon, a NASA spacecraft more than 200 million miles from Earth successfully touched the surface of an asteroid, in an attempt to grab a handful of pebbles and dust from the space rock. Data from the spacecraft confirmed that the vehicle did indeed touch the asteroid today, but NASA won’t know until tomorrow if it actually snagged a sample of material.

  “Touchdown declared,” a mission controller announced when the team received data confirming the maneuver. “Sampling in process.” The news of the success was met with cheers and applause from engineers following along with the procedure

• 

  Oct 20, 2020

  Loren Grush

  Watch as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission attempts to grab a sample from an asteroid

  This afternoon, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will grab a small sample of rocks from the surface of an asteroid named Bennu zooming through space more than 200 million miles from Earth. It’s an ambitious task, but if it works, OSIRIS-REx may eventually return to Earth with the largest sample of material from another space body since NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon.

  The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been circling Bennu for the last two years, mapping its surface and hunting for the right spot to snag these rocks. After an intense amount of planning from the mission team, the engineers have a target all picked out on Bennu and are ready to send their spacecraft down to the surface. OSIRIS-REx will lightly touch the surface of Bennu with an extended robotic arm, which will then blast air onto the rocks and stir things up. The blast should send pebbles and dust up into the arm. The rubble will then be stored inside the spacecraft for the long journey home

• 

  Oct 19, 2020

  Loren Grush

  A NASA spacecraft is poised to snag the largest sample of rocks from an asteroid ever

  

  Image: NASA

  Tomorrow, a US spacecraft more than 200 million miles from Earth will sneak up to an asteroid larger than the Empire State Building and snag a handful of rocks from its surface. If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will store the precious cache of rocks inside its belly, and will eventually transport the materials to Earth, where they can be studied by scientists in a lab.

  The spacecraft stealing these rocks is called OSIRIS-REx, part of the first-ever NASA mission tasked with returning samples of an asteroid back to Earth. Launched in September of 2016, OSIRIS-REx spent two years traveling to an asteroid named Bennu. Since it arrived in 2018, the spacecraft has been circling the asteroid and mapping it in excruciating detail, in order to find just the right spot to scoop up a sample

• 

  Apr 20, 2020

  Loren Grush

  How engineers are operating deep-space probes, Martian rovers, and satellites from their homes

  

  Last Tuesday, a team of engineers sat huddled around their computer screens, monitoring a spacecraft as it maneuvered around a rocky asteroid more than 140 million miles from Earth. They were conducting an important interplanetary dress rehearsal, running the spacecraft through many of the operations it will do in August when it attempts to snag a tiny sample of rocks from the asteroid’s surface. This dress rehearsal has been in the works for years, and the team had expected to be gathered together for it in a mission center in Colorado.

  Instead, most of them kept tabs on the event from home. “It was a skeleton crew that was supporting the event in person, compared to what was originally planned,” Mike Moreau, deputy project manager for the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, tells The Verge. “More than three-quarters of the team was doing it from home and monitoring remotely.”

• 

  Dec 12, 2019

  Loren Grush

  NASA picks the asteroid crater its spacecraft will steal rocks from next summer

  

  Next year, NASA plans to scoop up a small batch of dirt from an asteroid named Bennu, located millions of miles from Earth — and now the agency knows which part of the space rock it’s going to steal from. Today, the space agency announced that one of its spacecraft will attempt to grab some particles from a 20-meter-wide crater, called Nightingale, on the asteroid.

  Engineers picked the Nightingale site from four final candidate spots on Bennu, arguing it could be the best place to find organic material and water on the asteroid that may hail from the earliest days of the Solar System. “This one really came out on top, because of the scientific value,” Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the asteroid sampling mission, said during a press conference announcing the selection. However, targeting the crater is not without risk. The area is surrounded by a large wall of rocks, which could make it difficult to grab a sample. But ultimately, Lauretta said the area could have what they’re looking for.

• 

  Jun 17, 2019

  Loren Grush

  NASA spacecraft snaps detailed asteroid picture from closest orbit yet

  

  Image: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin

  NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft OSIRIS-REx just snapped its closest picture yet of Bennu, the deep-space rock it’s been hovering around since the end of last year. The high-resolution image highlights the object’s very rocky surface and even showcases a very large boulder on its southern half.

  OSIRIS-REx took this up-close picture on June 13th, right after the spacecraft inserted itself into orbit around Bennu for the second time. The vehicle first got into Bennu’s orbit on December 31st, 2018, flying about a mile away from the asteroid’s surface. From that path, OSIRIS-REx mapped Bennu’s surface in intricate detail, and also observed some interesting things from this vantage point, including rocks spewing from Bennu’s surface

• 

  Mar 19, 2019

  Loren Grush

  NASA spacecraft discovers its target asteroid is spewing material and is much more rugged than expected

  

  Image: NASA

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made an astonishing discovery about the asteroid it has been orbiting since December: the rock is actively spewing material out into space. The asteroid, named Bennu, has ejected materials up to 11 times since the spacecraft has been there. But no one is sure what exactly is causing these bursts.

  The revelation is just one of many surprises that scientists have learned about Bennu, ever since OSISIR-REx reached the asteroid late last year. Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-REx is tasked with eventually grabbing a sample from Bennu and then returning it back to Earth, to help scientists better study asteroids — remnants of the early Solar System. But before that happens, the OSIRIS-REx mission team is trying to learn as much as it can about the asteroid using the spacecraft’s instruments.

  Read Article >

• 

  Dec 11, 2018

  Mary Beth Griggs

  NASA’s latest asteroid target had a wet and wild history

  

  NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

  Long before it struck out on its own, a distant, small asteroid called Bennu had a wet, watery start, according to new evidence just announced by NASA.

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which arrived at Bennu on December 3rd after a two-year journey, is currently positioned about 12 miles above the surface of the asteroid. It recently sent back data indicating that the asteroid’s surface is littered with clay-like minerals that indicate that parts of this space rock had liquid water at some point in its distant past.

  Read Article >

• 

  Dec 3, 2018

  Loren Grush

  After a two-year journey, a NASA spacecraft arrives at its target asteroid

  

  Image: NASA

  Today, one of NASA’s deep-space probes, OSIRIS-REx, arrived at the space rock it’s been traveling toward for the last two years, an asteroid named Bennu. At noon ET, OSIRIS-REx came within about 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the asteroid, which is closer than ever before. The arrival means that OSIRIS-REx is now starting a new phase of its mission that entails extensively mapping the surface of the asteroid to find the best place to grab a sample of material.

  “We have arrived!” Javi Cerna, the OSIRIS-REx telecom engineer at Lockheed Martin, jubilantly proclaimed on NASA TV when the mission team received word that the spacecraft had made it to the asteroid. The announcement was followed by cheers and applause by the team members at the Denver headquarters of Lockheed Martin, the company that built the spacecraft

• 

  Aug 25, 2018

  Loren Grush

  NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft spies its target for the first time

  

  Image: NASA

  NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, has captured its very first images of the deep-space target it’s currently hurtling toward — a nearly half-mile-wide space rock orbiting the Sun named Bennu. It’s a big step for the vehicle as it prepares for its arrival at the asteroid in December of this year.

  Since the picture was taken from so far away — at a distance of 1.4 million miles — Bennu appears as just a few pixels of light moving across space. But for the OSIRIS-REx team, it shows that their spacecraft is on the right track and that Bennu is right where they expected. “Many of us have been working for years and years and years to get this first image down,” Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said during a press conference on Friday.

• 

  Sep 19, 2017

  Loren Grush

  A NASA spacecraft is about to slingshot around Earth to meet up with an asteroid

  

  Image: NASA

  On Friday, a spacecraft the size of an SUV will slingshot around Earth’s South Pole, altering its trajectory through space. The probe is NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, and its upcoming maneuver around our planet is known as a gravity assist — a way to harness Earth’s gravity to alter its orbit. The move is critical, since it will put OSIRIS-REx on course to meet up with an asteroid in the fall of 2018.

  OSIRIS-REx launched last year with a relatively straightforward purpose: grab a sample of rocks from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. If all goes well, the vehicle should retrieve the largest sample ever collected from an asteroid, and give scientists the chance to study the space rock components in more detail than ever before. But first, the probe has to reach its target — a nearby asteroid named Bennu.

• 

  Sep 9, 2016

  Loren Grush

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is now on its way to asteroid Bennu

  

  NASA

  An Atlas V rocket just successfully launched NASA’s OSIRIS-REx vehicle into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, initiating the spacecraft’s journey to grab a sample from an asteroid and bring it back to Earth. The probe’s expedition isn’t exactly a short one, though. It will take OSIRIS-REx seven years to rendezvous with the asteroid, scoop up a small sample of materials off the space rock, and then return back to our planet. If all goes according to plan, it’ll be the first time NASA brings back pieces of an asteroid, allowing researchers to closely study the chemical makeup of Bennu in laboratories here on Earth.

  OSIRIS-REx is now on its way into a heliocentric orbit. In two weeks, NASA will turn all the spacecraft’s instruments on to see if they’re working properly. Then it’s smooth sailing for OSIRIS-REx, as it spends the next year traveling around the Sun. The spacecraft will eventually swing back by Earth in September 2017 and use the planet’s gravity to change the plane of its orbit, putting it in the same plane as Bennu. Then it’s another year of traveling through space until OSIRIS-REx reaches the asteroid in August 2018

• 

  Sep 8, 2016

  NASA is about to launch a spacecraft to an asteroid to learn more about life on Earth

  On Thursday, a NASA spacecraft will launch on a seven-year round-trip journey to an asteroid with one simple mission: scoop up pieces of the space rock and bring them back to Earth. It’s the space agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and if it’s successful, the spacecraft will collect the largest sample ever from a near-Earth asteroid. And those asteroid pieces could tell us a great deal about how the Solar System came to be and possibly how life got started on our planet.

  Asteroids are thought to be tiny snapshots of the early Solar System. Researchers believe these objects have remained relatively untouched for billions of years, so tapping into one could tell us what the original chemical makeup of the Solar System looked like. There’s also speculation that asteroids may contain the so-called building blocks for life — water, organic molecules, and amino acids. Analyzing an asteroid could then tell us if these space rocks are responsible for bringing life’s precursors to Earth.