OSIRIS-REx was the third mission in history to collect a sample from an asteroid and featured the most comprehensive suite of instruments ever flown on an asteroid research mission. The spacecraft’s two years of scanning the surface of asteroid Bennu and its brief sample-collection touchdown showed scientists how little they know about space rocks. Prior to OSIRIS-REx‘s 2016 launch, two other missions studied asteroids in detail: Japan’s Hayabusa 1 that delivered sand and dust grains from asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010; and NASA’s NEAR-Shoemaker, which explored asteroid Eros in…
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