A scanning electron microscope view of the minerals in the Bennu sample; fig. A shows the snake-shaped clay that contains water. Screenshot of NASA livestream ...

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft closely approached Bennu three years ago, it extended a Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism head, or TAGSAM, toward the asteroid and fired a blast of nitrogen gas.

A tiny fraction of the asteroid Bennu sample returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, shown in microscope images. The top-left pane shows a dark Bennu particle, about a millimeter long, with an ...

Dworkin said the OSIRIS-REx team has 12 major hypotheses about the sample. They want to further analyze it and interpret the findings so far of the magnetite, clay, carbonate, water, and other ...

In October 2023, the sample was brought to Earth aboard OSIRIS-REx's capsule, which reached speeds of up to 27,000 mph (43,000 km/h) before it deployed its parachute and landed safely in the Utah ...

We can train students and have them on an electron microscope, looking at material from Bennu, in days. Being in this new environment with the student and community focus is wonderful.

It took two years for NASA's OSIRIS-REx space probe to return from asteroid Bennu before dropping off a small capsule as it flew past Earth, which was then recovered in the desert of the U.S ...

A focused-ion-beam scanning-electron microscope, capable of drilling a hole in a piece of dust, provided a nanoscopic look at the asteroid sample from OSIRIS-REx.(Photo: Mari Cleven/UA Office of ...

Following him, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta showed four more finely detailed images of the sample, all taken by an electron microscope, and spoke more about the significance of ...