Seven years ago, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission was launched to collect asteroid samples from the near-Earth object Bennu. Today, the samples made landfall on Earth, closing a long-awaited chapter for the mission.
on May 10, 2021. Upon its touchdown on September 24th, The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer had journeyed 3.9 billion miles.is not the first attempt a space agency has made to deliver an asteroid sample to Earth, this mission’s rendition has the largest sample size. The Bennu sample is estimated to hold about half a pound of rocky material from the asteroid's surface.
While the sample made landfall, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft remained in space. It has now set off on ato explore another near-Earth asteroid called Apophis, which NASA says is roughly 1,200 feet in diameter and will come within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029. The new project, dubbed OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer , will study changes in the asteroid that experts believed in 2004 had a
. The spacecraft’s gas thrusters will attempt to "dislodge dust and small rocks on and below Apophis’ surface," giving experts data on how asteroid's proximity to Earth affected its orbit, spin rate and surface composition.
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