NASA's First Asteroid Samples Land On Earth After Release From Spacecraft | Marcia Dunn

This image taken from video provided by NASA TV shows the capsule released by the Osiris-Rex spacecraft lying on the surface near the parachute after landing to Earth, Sunday Sept. 24 2023. Credit: NASA TV via AP

Marcia Dunn -- Phys.org

Sept. 24, 2023

NASA's first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

"We have touchdown!" Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated -- around 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) -- basing it on the deceleration rate.

To everyone's relief, the capsule was intact and not breached, keeping its 4.5 billion-year-old samples free of contamination. Within two hours of touchdown, the capsule was inside a temporary clean room at the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range, hoisted there by helicopter.

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