OSIRIS-REx Delivers Asteroid Bennu Samples to Earth Preview

NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission faces the most difficult part of its journey as it approaches Earth for atmospheric reentry and recovery. The spacecraft is on course to deliver a capsule that will touch down in a western United States desert Sept. 24, completing a seven-year journey and making it the first NASA mission to retrieve surface material from an asteroid. OSIRIS-REx launched on Sept. 8, 2016 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, in Florida, and began a two-year trip to rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft arrived in orbit around Bennu in August 2018, where it then spent another two years scanning and mapping the asteroid's surface.

On Oct. 20, 2020, after thoroughly observing Bennu's topography from orbit, OSIRIS-REx descended to the asteroid's surface and recovered material that was stowed in the spacecraft's sample return capsule. A May 2021 burn of OSIRIS-REx's propulsion system then set the probe on a 1.2 billion-mile (1.9 billion-kilometer) rendezvous course with Earth.