Asteroid Science Collection

China's Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamooalewa 2016 HO3. The country could join the United States and Japan, whose

NASA completed its first-ever sample return mission from an asteroid today, with a science capsule containing material from an asteroid landing after having traveled on a 1.2 billion-mile journey

Lee esta nota de prensa en espaol aqu.. Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the quotbrothquot for these compounds to

Fragments of the asteroid Bennu, carefully collected and ferried to Earth by a robotic spacecraft, contain the building blocks for life, NASA announced today. NASA 'fist bumps' an asteroid to

The spacecraft, which had been drifting away from the asteroid since sample collection, returned to Bennu on 7 April 2021 for a final flyby to characterize the newly exposed subsurface fig. S10 and tables S2 and S3. D. S. Lauretta, Variations in color and reflectance on the surface of asteroid 101955 Bennu. Science 370, eabc3660 2020.

NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft returned 122 grams 4 ounces of dust and pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to the Utah desert in 2023 before swooping off after another space rock. It remains the biggest cosmic haul from beyond the moon. The two previous asteroid sample missions, by Japan, yielded considerably less material.

OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. It returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, to drop off a capsule with material from asteroid Bennu. After dropping off the sample capsule through Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft was renamed OSIRIS-APEX and sent on a new mission to explore asteroid Apophis in 2029.

Decades of institutional experience aided research on solar system's origins . When NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer passed by the Earth in September 2023 and released a sample return capsule full of dust and rocks, it marked the end of a 7-year, 4 billion-mile journey to visit and collect a small piece of an asteroid, but

These articles describe the ways asteroid sample return missions generate new scientific insights at every stage - from the collection process, to the container's return to Earth, to

Bennu may exist as a midsize asteroid in a near-Earth orbit today, but the team suspects that eons ago its water-loaded parent first took shape beyond the snow linea diffuse thermal