NASA Takes Extra Precaution After 4.5 Billion-Year-Old Asteroid Piece Returns to Earth

After launching years ago, the Osiris-REx probe has returned home with a piece of the ancient meteorite.

By Andrew Roberts

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made its return to Earth on Sunday, delivering its long-awaited sample of a massive space rock or asteroid named Bennu after a 3.86 billion mile roundtrip. OSIRIS-REx, an acronym for "Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer," according to CNN, lifted off back in 2016 and began its orbit of the asteroid in 2018.

The trip to return started back in May 2021, with the sample in hold inside a capsule. An estimated 8.8 ounces of rock and soil are included in the capsule and made a gentle touchdown in Utah at the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range. The vehicle dropped the capsule at around 63,000 miles above the Earth's surface on Sunday, entering the atmosphere a little before 11 a.m. ET.

"Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team. You did it," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. "It brought something extraordinary, the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth. This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that inspire us, things that unite us. It wasn't mission impossible. It was the impossible that became possible."

Now just because it is a rock from space doesn't mean NASA is just treating it like a normal rock. While OSIRIS-REx is back out traversing the cosmos for its next big find, scientists were back treating the arrival of the space rock with a lot of caution. Four helicopters transported the recovery capsule to the landing site. with teams on hand checking for any damage to the capsule. Teams have trained for months for this moment.

The big concern to start with the sample is any outside contamination by the environment in Utah, but there are plenty of other concerns the research teams have prepared to tackle. The lid of the capsule won't be removed until Tuesday and a small bit of sample from the lid will be analyzed to give some details for a planned broadcast on Oct. 11.

The true analysis won't be completed that swiftly, with a dedicated clean room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston set aside for the next two years. Even if there is a government shutdown, it won't change the "curation and safe handling" of the sample, according to Lori Glaze, the director of NASA's Planetary Sciences Division.

"Certain steps leading to this highly anticipated analysis will possibly be delayed, but the sample will remain protected and safe despite any disruptions to the schedule," she added on Friday. "The sample has waited for more than 4 billion years for humans to study it and if it takes us a little longer, I think we'll be OK."

All of this preparation and planning aside, it is hard to avoid referencing The Andromeda Strain when it comes to this situation. While Michael Crichton's book is fiction, it does sort of play out like Sunday's events. The difference between Crichton's book, the film that followed, and the reality, is that the "military satellite" carrying an outer space sample escaped its containment and killed everybody in Piedmont, Arizona, by clotting their blood instantly and turning it to dust. It goes off the rails into science fiction after that, but it does show a good reason for NASA to be extra cautious.

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