A seven-year journey concludes as a NASA capsule successfully lands in the Utah desert
In a historic achievement, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe concluded its seven-year space odyssey by landing in the US state of Utah, bringing with it the most extensive asteroid sample ever collected. The mission, the first of its kind in the United States, culminated in a soft landing on Sunday, providing scientists with valuable insights into the solar system’s formation and the conditions that made Earth habitable.
NASA chief Bill Nelson praised the mission, anticipating that the asteroid dust would offer an extraordinary glimpse into the early stages of our solar system. Launched in 2016, the OSIRIS-REx probe reached the asteroid Bennu, collecting an estimated 250g (9oz) of dust from its rocky surface.
The sample capsule, released from an altitude of over 107,826km (67,000 miles), underwent a fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, facing temperatures of up to 2,760 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last 13 minutes before the soft landing in the military’s Utah Test and Training Range.
