OSIRIS-REx

OSIRIS-REx launched on September 8, 2016, to asteroid Bennu — a rubble pile the height of the Empire State Building whose orbit occasionally brushes uncomfortably close to Earth’s. After two years mapping the boulder-strewn body, the spacecraft performed a balletic ‘touch-and-go’ in October 2020, tagging the surface for six seconds and blasting rubble into its collector head.

The maneuver gathered far more material than required — so much that the collector jammed partially open. In September 2023, the sample capsule parachuted into the Utah desert carrying 121.6 grams of pristine asteroid, the largest sample returned since Apollo. Bennu’s grains, rich in carbon, water-bearing clays, and even phosphates, are time capsules from the solar system’s birth. The spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX, flew onward to asteroid Apophis.