NASA’s Osiris-REx Mission Brings Home Largest Asteroid Sample Ever Collected

Mission controllers and scientists broke into whoops and applause Sunday as they watched an orange Creamsicle-colored parachute deploy above a capsule carrying the largest sample ever collected from an asteroid.

Osiris-REx, the robotic spacecraft that helped deliver the sample to Earth, is part of a mission of the same name launched seven years ago by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to a space rock named Bennu. After a nearly 4 billion-mile journey through space, the 20-foot-long Osiris-REx buzzed by our planet this weekend. It jettisoned a capsule containing rocks and dust collected from Bennu’s surface, which safely landed in the desert of western Utah.