osiris-rex

2020 was a banner year for space exploration. In May, NASA returned to human spaceflight from the US for the first time in nearly a decade, with the liftoff of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from Kennedy Space Center.

NASA and its academic partners are about to do something they’ve never done before: launch a spacecraft, rendezvous with an asteroid, collect a sample of regolith, or dust, from the surface and return it to Earth.

NASA and its academic partners are about to do something they’ve never done before: launch a spacecraft, rendezvous with an asteroid, collect a sample of regolith, or dust, from the surface and return it to Earth.