NASA reveals contents of asteroid sample canister whose lid was stuck

A NASA staff has lastly eliminated two “stubborn” fasteners on the lid of a return capsule from its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to disclose the supplies it harvested from an asteroid, the house company stated Friday.

OSIRIS-REx ended its historic seven-year, 4 billion-mile round-trip journey to gather samples from the supposedly carbon-rich house rock Bennu in September. 

The astromaterials curation staff at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of asteroid materials from the return capsule, however have been unable to entry the majority of the supplies as a result of two of the 35 fasteners on its lid have been stuck. The staff was beforehand unable to take away the fasteners with the instruments accepted to be used contained in the OSIRIS-REx glovebox.

The remaining asteroid materials consists of mud and rocks as much as about 0.4 inch (one cm) in measurement, the house company stated, including that the sample’s last mass shall be decided within the coming weeks.

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A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid eliminated, revealing the rest of the asteroid sample inside.  (NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold)

A catalog of all of the Bennu samples shall be launched later this yr. NASA stated it’ll permit scientists and establishments all over the world to submit requests to analysis the supplies or to set the asteroid particles on show.

An OSIRIS-REx curation staff member makes an attempt to take away the 2 stuck fasteners stopping entry to the asteroid supplies on Jan. 10. (NASA/Robert Markowitz)

Following its success, scientists despatched the OSIRIS-REx on a second mission to the asteroid Apophis, anticipated to cross nearer to Earth in 2029 than some other similarly-sized asteroid in recorded historical past.

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Now renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Apophis Explorer), NASA says the spacecraft will drop inside 16 ft of the asteroid’s floor and hearth its thrusters to fire up rocks and dirt, providing scientists a glimpse of what lies beneath.

The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down within the desert on Sept. 24, 2023, on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.  (NASA/Keegan Barber)

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Apophis is a greater than 1,000-foot-wide house rock named for an Egyptian deity and nicknamed the “God of Chaos.”

Fox News’ Hannah Ray Lambert contributed to this report.