Updated By: LatestGKGS Desk
NASA OSIRIS-REx touchdown with the asteroid Bennu on 20th August 2020 AT 2212 GMT
OSIRIS-REx has made a successful touchdown with the asteroid Bennu on 20th August 2020 AT 2212 GMT
Touchdown declared! NASA's spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has made successful contact with the asteroid Bennu at a marked location crater Nightengale.
After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex briefly touched down on asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday to collect rock and dust samples in a precision operation 200 million miles (330 million kilometers) from Earth.
If Osiris-Rex successfully comes home in September 2023, it will have collected the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.
OSIRIS-REx has now grabbed a sample of the asteroid and will bring it back to Earth. Congratulations to all the amazing scientists involved in this historic moment - this is the first time NASA has landed on an asteroid.
