OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return [video]

It's pretty amazing they launched it to an asteroid, landed something on it, brought it back up, then flew it back to earth and managed to drop it within a specific small zone of the Utah desert. And then on top of that the spacecraft is going to continue on studying another asteroid.

I guess they figured out a lot of this stuff with the first moon rock samples in 1969 but still it's amazing thinking about all the moving parts.

They also apparently learned a lot from the failed solar wind sample return called Genesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission

Perhaps the coolest thing to me about this mission is that they pulled off this historic sample return, and then the craft swung back around to head out for another mission.

This would be really fun to try in KSP.

> Sir Brian May, of Queen, has told Nasa TV he is “immensely proud” to be a team member of Osiris-Rex. May was among those who helped to identify the location on Bennu where the samples would be collected.

Can you say overachiever? I mean best rock band ever and still doing astrophysicist work? Seriously though I'm in awe someone can accomplish so much, I often feel I can barely keep everything afloat.

Beautiful!

I was reading that there have been sample returns from asteroids before, like Hayabusa (by JAXA) in 2010. It's said that asteroid sample returns could shed light on the early days of our solar system.

Anyone know what kind of new insights they were able to derive from those samples in the past 13 years?

Pretty exciting stuff, showing a live image of the capsule entering right now

Edit: Neat seeing EDL from an earth POV, too. Kind of reverses the usual formula for eg landing on Mars.

Edit edit: touchdown!

For a moment I was afraid the drogue shoot had failed to deploy. But congrats to NASA for getting an asteroid sample safely back to Earth!

In the top-left corner there is a counter with "OSIRIX-REx Landing \n G+x".

Never heard of "G+" time before.