NASA’s spacecraft that landed on the asteroid Bennu last week picked up more than 900 grams of debris. A few days after landing it turned out that he lost part of the cargo, but now the remaining cargo is secured in a capsule.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft collected so much material on October 20 that stones were left in the rim of the container. This kept the valve open, and precious grit was lost.
How much grit Osiris-Rex is carrying is not yet known. That will only become clear when the space probe, now only 322 million kilometers away, lands in the Utah desert in 2023. “We still have a lot of work to do to secure the samples,” one of the chief scientists told AP news agency.
The spacecraft will take off away from the asteroid at the earliest in March. Then the asteroid and the Earth are properly aligned.
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