NASA has successfully returned a 250-gram sample of dirt from a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. Scientists around the world will study the rock particles to see if they contain clues to the origins of life on our planet.
United Launch Alliance via NASA
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.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab
The findings from an independent review board suggest that NASA’s quest to return samples from Mars is riddled with challenges and seemingly impossible to accomplish under the current cost and schedule expectations.
NASA/Insider
NASA’s $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission launched to space in September 2016 with a simple, albeit ambitious, objective: travel to a distant asteroid and bring back a sample of it.
The International Space Station (ISS) has been orbiting Earth for 24 years, hosting crews of astronauts and running experiments in the microgravity environment. By 2030, however, the space station’s reign in low Earth orbit must come to an end and NASA is figuring out exactly how to do that.
NTB/Rune Stoltz Bertinussen/Reuters
After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns.