samples

NASA’s Asteroid Samples May Be Crumbs From an Ancient Ocean World

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After months of frustration, NASA finally got the Bennu asteroid sample container open in January, revealing the large amounts of asteroid scooped up by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Now, a top member of the mission says the distant hunk of space rock may be a planetesimal—a planet’s building block—that once belonged to an ocean world. ‘More … Read more

Bennu Asteroid Samples May ‘Fundamentally’ Shift Views of Life

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We’ve all been there: You’re getting some peanut butter, or looking to nosh a nice pickle, when you find your wrist strength is insufficient to get at the jar’s delicious contents. That’s more or less NASA’s vexing issue with the OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples—though, of course, that canister’s contents aren’t for eating. The M3 MacBook Pro: … Read more

Apollo Mission Samples Reveal the Moon Is More Ancient Than We Thought

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The Moon’s crater-covered countenance was previously thought to be a youthful 4.42 billion years old, give or take about 10 million years. But now, samples of crystals taken from the rocky satellite half a century ago indicate that the Moon is about 40 million years older than we knew. Moon Knight Gives Us Hope The … Read more

NASA shows off its first asteroid samples delivered by a spacecraft

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA on Wednesday showed off its first asteroid samples delivered last month by a spacecraft — the most ever returned to Earth. Scientists and space agency leaders took part in the reveal at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The ancient black dust and chunks are from the carbon-rich asteroid named … Read more

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brings asteroid samples back to Earth

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Next year, NASA plans to scoop up a small batch of dirt from an asteroid named Bennu, located millions of miles from Earth — and now the agency knows which part of the space rock it’s going to steal from. Today, the space agency announced that one of its spacecraft will attempt to grab some … Read more

Watch NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Return Asteroid Samples to Earth

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The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on its way to Earth to drop off rocky samples from asteroid Bennu on Sunday, marking NASA’s first attempt to retrieve a piece of a pure space rock. Vizio’s Latest TVs Go All Quantum The highly-anticipated drop-off has been seven years in the making, but the wait is finally over. OSIRIS-REx … Read more