NASA Prepares for Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is returning to Earth with a sample collected from the surface of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft will deliver the sample to Earth on September 24, becoming the first US mission to return an asteroid sample. The OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the OSIRIS-REx science team around the world for analysis, and curate the rest for other scientists to study, now and in future generations.