| Success! As a follow up to last week’s #SpaceFactFriday, OSIRIS-REx has successfully touched down on asteroid Bennu and collected a sample. The sensational video above from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center features a compelling image reel from the event, and it might just give you chills! It will take about a week for the mission team to determine how much of sample material was actually collected. If the spacecraft has collected at least 60 grams of a sample, the mission team will command OSIRIS-REx to stow the sample and prepare for its departure back to Earth early next year. If there was not enough sample collected this round, the spacecraft will attempt another touchdown on January 12, 2021. While we patiently await the outcome of this Touch-and-Go event, we are celebrating a victory for OSIRIS-REx and for space exploration as a whole. Here are few photos of our operations team at the launch back in 2016! |
New images show NASA spacecraft’s historic landing and sample collection on asteroid
- Image Credit: NASA/OSIRIS-REx
