Asteroid Sample Return Mission

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  China’s Tianwen 2 Probe Snaps Striking Views of Earth and Moon While En Route to Asteroid

  China’s Tianwen 2 spacecraft, now millions of kilometers from Earth, captured distant images of Earth and the moon as it journeys to asteroid Kamo'oalewa. Set to collect samples by 2026 and return them in 2027, the mission could reveal insights into the solar system’s formation—before continuing on to a second deep-space target, comet 311P/PA...

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  Earth Microbes Discovered in Asteroid Ryugu Sample, Raises Contamination Concerns

  A study has confirmed that terrestrial microbes colonised a Ryugu asteroid sample after its return to Earth in 2020. The micro-organisms were found to proliferate upon exposure to Earth's atmosphere, raising concerns over contamination risks in planetary exploration. Published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, the findings underline the need for ...

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  NASA Unveils Newly Returned Carbon-Rich Asteroid Sample

  NASA on Wednesday gave the public a first glimpse of what scientists found inside a sealed capsule that was returned to Earth last month carrying a carbon-rich soil sample scooped from an asteroid's surface, including water-bearing clay minerals. A small quantity of the material collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago from the near-E...

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  NASA Capsule With Largest Sample Ever From Asteroid Returns To Earth

  The largest sample ever collected from an asteroid in space, and the first for NASA, landed in the Utah desert Sunday after a fiery final descent through Earth's atmosphere, seven years after the mission's launch.

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  NASA's Historic Asteroid Space Probe Set To Return To Earth After 7 Years

  NASA's first mission to retrieve an asteroid sample and return it to US is expected to reach a perilous finale on Sunday with a descent into the Utah desert. Scientists hope the material will help understand the formation of solar system.

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  Water Drop Discovered on Ryugu Asteroid Offers Clues to Origins of Life on Earth

  A water drop discovered on specks of dust from Ryugu, an asteroid close to Earth, has offered new support for the theory that life on the planet was seeded from outer space. The sample of the asteroid retrieved by the Hayabusa-2 probe has already showed that some of the building blocks of life on Earth, amino acids, may have been formed in space. T...

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  Japan's Hayabusa-2 Probe Returns Rare Asteroid Sample to Earth, JAXA Announces

  Japan space agency officials on Sunday hailed the arrival of rare asteroid samples on Earth after they were collected by space probe Hayabusa-2 during an unprecedented mission.

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  NASA Mission Picks 4 Sites for Asteroid Bennu Sample Return

  Since its arrival in December 2018, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has mapped the entire asteroid.

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  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spaceship Sets Record by Entering Orbit Around Asteroid Bennu

  Elon Musk has suggested that the first resident on Mars could be artificial intelligence (AI). Musk wants to establish a base on Mars.

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  NASA's OSIRIS-REx Probe, Its First Asteroid Sample Collector, Reaches Target 'Bennu'

  NASA's first-ever mission designed to visit an asteroid and return a sample of its dust back to Earth arrived Monday at its destination, Bennu.

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  After 2-Year Journey, NASA Spacecraft Reaches Target Asteroid

  NASA's first-ever mission designed to visit an asteroid and return a sample of its dust back to Earth arrives Monday at its destination, Bennu, two years after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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  NASA's OSIRIS-Rex Blasts Off On Ambitious Mission To Visit Asteroid, Bring A Piece Home

  More than a dozen years and a billion dollars have gone into the ambitious mission.

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  NASA's First-Ever Asteroid Mission Set For Launch

  Bolted to the top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will lift off on Thursday to study an asteroid and return to Earth seven years later with a sample for first-hand analysis.

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  Nasa to Launch First US Asteroid Sample Return Mission on September 8

  OSIRIS-REx will launch aboard the Atlas V 411 rocket and is scheduled to reach its asteroid target, Bennu, in 2018.

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  NASA Set To Launch First Asteroid Sample Return Mission

  NASA is set to launch its first mission to return pristine samples of an asteroid to Earth, which will help study how planets formed and how life began.