Sept. 24 (UPI) — A 250-gram dust sample from the Bennu asteroid, collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, landed on Earth on Sunday.
The probe landed in the Utah desert at 10:52 a.m. EDT. NASA’s recovery team will recover the capsule and bring it to the nearby Department of Defense Utah Test and Training Range, according to BBC.
It is America’s first sample return mission of its kind, NASA said.
Four helicopters were dispatched to the landing site. The recovery team will assess any damage to the capsule while waiting for it to be safe to recover.
The capsule reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it.
Flight operations are being managed by Lockheed Martin Space, CNN reported.
OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Apophis Explorer, first landed on Bennu in 2020.
Upon landing, researchers were surprised at the loose consistency of the asteroid. It departed the asteroid in 2021.
The spacecraft launched in 2016. It has traveled about 3.86 billion miles, according to NASA.
OSIRIS-REx will next travel to the asteroid Apophis as part of the extended OSIRIS-APEX mission.
