NASA successfully completed the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid as they recovered the OSIRIS-REx sample capsule that landed Sunday at the Utah Test and Training Range.
DUGWAY — An asteroid landed in the Utah desert Sunday morning — a piece of it, at least — as NASA scientists successfully completed the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.
A helicopter long lines the capsule containing NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample from where it was retrieved to a clean room at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Dugway on Sunday. Anjani Polit, mission implementations engineer for OSIRIS-REx at University of Arizona, said Sunday morning that the timeline for the mission went "perfectly."
The main parachute was initially meant to deploy at 5,050 feet, and its early deployment is what led to a slightly earlier landing time of 8:52 a.m. instead of 8:55 a.m. The capsule landed in the middle of a 37-mile by 9-mile oval at the test range. In Houston, the sample will be separated into parts to be studied and shared. Around 75% will be preserved in a vault in White Sands, New Mexico, to be studied by future generations with better technology for analyzing space samples. This is the same protocol followed with samples from NASA's moon landing missions.
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