NASA is expecting to recover samples from the asteroid Bennu Sunday (September 24), the first time the US space agency has collected samples from a celestial body in the asteroid belt.
The sample capsule, which is scheduled to land near Utah's Salt Lake City, is part of NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to the asteroid. The probe was able to collect samples from Bennu in 2020 and spent three years on a return trajectory towards Earth. The sample capsule was released at 06:42 Eastern Time (10:42 UTC) Sunday while the spacecraft was 63,000 miles (101,388 kilometers) from Earth, about a third of the distance to the Moon, Space.com reported.
A Mission to the Asteroids
Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-REx is a $1 billion space probe with a mission to intercept Bennu to collect a sample to understand better its composition and asteroids like it, which were remnants of the early solar system.
The next time the probe itself would fly close to Earth would be in 2029. Between now and then, OSIRIS-REx is heading toward the asteroid Apophis, prompting NASA to rename the spacecraft as OSIRIS-REx-APEX.
As of Sunday, OSIRIS-REx's recovery teams are prepared to track and retrieve the return capsule, which would enter Earth's atmosphere off the coast of California and streak across the morning sky before deploying a parachute for a soft landing.
