Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA finally has counted up all the asteroid samples returned by a spacecraft last fall — and it's double the rubble return goal.
Officials reported Thursday that the Osiris-Rex spacecraft collected 4.29 ounces of dust and pebbles from asteroid Bennu. That's just over half a cup and the biggest cosmic haul ever from beyond the moon.
It took NASA longer than expected to pry open the sample container because of stuck fasteners.
The black, carbon-rich samples — the first ever collected from an asteroid by NASA — are stored at a special curation lab at Houston's Johnson Space Center.
Osiris-Rex returned the samples last September during a landing in the Utah desert, three years after gathering them from the asteroid. The haul for the $1 billion mission would have been greater, but rocks jammed the lid of the container following the grab and some samples floated away.
The spacecraft is now on its way to another space rock, but that will involve only a flyby with no stop for samples.
