Page 35 - Training Range News Today

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample<a class="excerpt-read-more" href="https://whdh.com/news/nasas-first-asteroid-samples-land-on-earth-after-release-from-spacecraft/">Read More</a>

A seven-year space voyage came to its climactic end Sunday when a NASA capsule landed in the desert in the US state of Utah, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected.

The sample material from Bennu presents an opportunity for scientists to gain insights into the formation of our planet and the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

A capsule of material from the Bennu asteroid successfully landed in the desert near Dugway, Utah, on Sunday and was retrieved by NASA as part of the OSIRIS-REx mission. Learn more.

A capsule of material from the Bennu asteroid successfully landed in the desert near Dugway, Utah, on Sunday and was retrieved by NASA as part of the OSIRIS-REx mission. Learn more.

The pristine samples are believed to be leftover building blocks from the dawn of our solar system.

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey. In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set

Researchers believe the asteroid samples will shed light on the origins of our solar system.

After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth.

The samples are a staggering 4.5 billion years old.