The OSIRIS-REx sample return in Utah will bring a seven-year, four-billion-mile journey to a close, providing insights into the birth of the solar system.
Scientists were stunned at what they found. Instead of a more typical body, with fine-grained soils and rocks atop a solid interior, Bennu turned out to be a loosely compacted rubble pile that behaved more like a fluid than a solid.
An artist's impression of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, with its robot arm and sample acquisition mechanism extended, in orbit around the asteroid Bennu.on Oct. 20, 2020, its pie pan-shaped"Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism," or TAGSAM, poised at the end of an 11-foot-long robot arm. After backing away from Bennu, the TAGSAM mechanism and its precious samples were stowed inside the OSIRIS-REx return capsule for the long flight back to Earth and Sunday's dramatic re-entry.
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