OSIRIS-REx and Bennu: Sample return missions explained

Published : Sep 25, 2023 18:40 IST - 4 MINS READ NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is a robotic spacecraft that has been on a seven-year mission to collect and return samples from an asteroid called Bennu—billions of kilometres from Earth. At an altitude of about 250 kilometres from the surface of Earth, OSIRIS-REx will release a capsule carrying the samples over the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah, US—come “rain or shine,” said NASA. Sample return missions send spacecraft to land on a celestial body—a moon, asteroid or planet—and collect samples of soil, minerals and rock. Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration aims to be the first sample return mission to bring back rocks from the Mars region.