A NASA space capsule carrying a sample of rocky material plucked from the surface of an asteroid three years ago hurtled toward Earth this weekend headed for a fiery plunge through the atmosphere and a parachute landing in the Utah desert on Sunday.
Weather forecasts were favorable and the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx was on course to release the sample-return capsule for final descent as planned, with no further adjustments to its flight path needed, NASA officials said at a news briefing on Friday.
The round, gumdrop-shaped capsule is scheduled to land by parachute at 10:55 a.m. EDT , about 13 minutes after streaking into the top of the atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, capping a seven-year voyage. OSIRIS-REx collected its specimen from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999 and classified as a "near-Earth object" because it passes relatively close to our planet every six years. Scientists put the odds of it striking Earth at 1-in-2,700 in the late 22nd century.
"We're literally looking at geologic materials that formed before Earth even existed," Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told reporters last month.
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