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Mission operations assurance lead Graham Miller, left, recovery specialist Michael Kaye, and recovery specialist Levi Hanish, right, all with Lockheed Martin, prepare the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission for transport after it landed at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range on Sunday. A helicopter transports a capsule carrying NASA’s first asteroid samples at Dugway Proving …

Utah

Come September 24, and debris from an alien world will land on the earth. NASA’s asteroid hunting spacecraft OSIRIS-REx – short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – will drop a capsule containing pristine asteroid material in the Utah desert. The astro-material brought back by OSIRIS-REx, he added, “may provide scientists with valuable insights into how planets formed, what materials were …

NASA effort to bring home asteroid rocks will end this weekend in triumph or a crash Enlarge this image toggle caption NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona If all goes as planned, on Sunday morning a bell-shaped space capsule the size of a mini-fridge will come screaming down through the atmosphere toward a Utah desert. That moment "was gut-wrenching," says …