A NASA spacecraft touches an asteroid 200 million miles from Earth in agency’s first sample return attempt. A NASA spacecraft successfully made a brief stop on an asteroid 200 million miles from Earth to collect a sample from its surface.
The Osiris-Rex craft was attempting to collect a handful of rubble from the asteroid Bennu, which scientists say contains the building blocks of our solar system. It dropped out of orbit late on Tuesday and began a four and half hour descent to the boulder-covered surface of the space rock. If successful, Osiris-Rex will return the samples to Earth in 2023.

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