The climactic end of a seven-year voyage comes Sunday when a NASA capsule is due to land in the Utah desert, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected.
Scientists have high hopes for the sample, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.
The Osiris-Rex probe’s final, fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere will be perilous, but the US space agency is hoping for a soft landing, around 9:00am local (15H00 GMT), in a military test range in northwestern Utah.
Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250 grams) of dust from its rocky surface.
Even that small amount, NASA says, should “help us better understand the types of asteroids that could threaten Earth” and cast light “on the earliest history of our solar system,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
2023-09-25 03:00:05
Source from phys.org