sample return
OSIRIS-REx Did One Last Close Flyby of Asteroid Bennu. It’s Almost Time to Come Home
After more than two years in orbit around asteroid Bennu, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is ready to come home. It's bringing…
What a Geologist Sees When They Look at Perseverance’s Landing Site
Geologists love fieldwork. They love getting their specialized hammers and chisels into seams in the rock, exposing unweathered surfaces and…
Since Perseverance is Searching for Life, What Will it Be Looking for?
You have to be careful what you say to people. When NASA or someone else says that the Perseverance rover…
Here’s Chang’e-5, Seen From Lunar Orbit
Images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show where the Chang'e-5 mission landed. The samples obtained by this lander…
China’s Chang’e-5 Probe Blasts Off From the Moon, Bringing Back a Full Load of Samples
For the first time in more than 40 years, a robotic spacecraft has blasted off from the Moon – and…
NASA Has a New Challenge to Bring Frozen Samples of the Moon Back to Earth
The NASA Lunar Deep Freeze Challenge is looking for innovative ideas on how to bring back ice samples from the…
Just A Couple Of Weeks From Now, OSIRIS-REx Will Grab A Sample From Bennu
NASA is about to achieve another first for their organization. In about three weeks time, on October 20th, the OSIRIS-REx…
OSIRIS-REx did its Closest Flyover Yet, just 250 Meters Above its Sample Site
NASA's OSIRIS-REx is getting closer, physically and temporally, to its primary goal. The spacecraft arrived at Bennu at the end…
OSIRIS-REx Flew 620 Meters Above its Landing Site. Confirms that it’s a Boulder-Strewn Nightmare, Just Like the Rest of Bennu
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached its target, asteroid Bennu (101955 Bennu), on December 3rd, 2018. Since then, the spacecraft has been…
The Site Has Been Chosen! Here’s Where OSIRIS-REx is Going To Take a Sample from Bennu
NASA has chosen the sampling site for its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. After narrowing it down to four potential sites and examining…