NASA to bring asteroid Bennu sample back to Earth

If successful, the event would mark the first time NASA has collected and returned an asteroid sample to Earth from space.

According to the plan, the OSIRIS-REx probe will bring the sample back to Earth in the desert in Utah, the western United States. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu nearly 3 years ago and has been stored in the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft since then. When it is about 108,000 km away from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release the sample capsule. The capsule's journey back to Earth's atmosphere will last about 13 minutes before landing at a military testing site in Utah at 9:00 a.m. on September 24 local time (10:00 p.m. the same day Vietnam time).

Sandra Freund, Lockheed Martin's OSIRIS-REx program manager, said the mission to bring samples back to Earth is always difficult because there are many problems that can go wrong.

After the capsule lands safely in the desert, a team of scientists will inspect the condition of the sample before moving it to a temporary storage room for cleaning. A day later, the sample will be transported to a specialized laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

NASA estimates the sample may contain about 250 grams of material, more than the original collection target of 60 grams.

Scientists hope the sample will help them understand more about the formation of the solar system and how Earth became habitable. NASA is expected to announce the first results of the sample at a press conference on October 11.

Astronomers have long been interested in studying the most primitive material samples from asteroids because this helps to discover the origin of life and the Solar System. Previously, Japanese probes brought the first samples from two asteroids back to Earth, in 2010 and 2020, respectively.