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Articles on Sample return mission

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This artist’s rendering shows OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending toward asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will land on an asteroid to bring home rocks and dust – if it can avoid Mt. Doom

Elizabeth Cantwell, University of Arizona

OSIRIS-REx will touch down on asteroid Bennu, collect a sample of the dust and begin its journey back to Earth, where scientists will study it, hoping to learn secrets of the solar system’s origin.
In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., engineers observed the first driving test for the Mars rover, Perseverance. Perseverance will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars’ climate and geology, and collect samples for a future return to Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s big move to search for life on Mars – and to bring rocks home

Briony Horgan, Purdue University and Melissa Rice, Western Washington University

This summer, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is taking the next giant leap in our search for signs of life beyond Earth.
Asteroid Ryugu photographed from a distance of about 12 miles (20 kilometers) looks just gray and bland, but a close-up provides more color. JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu and AIST

Touching the asteroid Ryugu revealed secrets of its surface and changing orbit

Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University

It is a pretty spectacular achievement to not only rendezvous with an asteroid as it is whizzing around the Sun but also collect a sample. Here’s what the researchers learned.

Related Topics

  1. Asteroids
  2. Astronomy
  3. Hayabusa-2
  4. Martian geology
  5. Microbial life
  6. NASA
  7. Ryugu
  8. Solar system
  9. Space
  10. Space exploration

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