NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission Successfully Returns Asteroid Sample to Earth

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is set to complete its seven-year round-trip journey to the asteroid Bennu this weekend, bringing back the largest pristine sample of extraterrestrial material ever returned from beyond the Moon. The spacecraft will land in Utah on Sunday, and the tightly-choreographed process of securing the asteroid sample capsule will begin. The samples, which could provide insights into the formation of life, will be transported to a NASA facility in Houston for analysis. The mission's principal investigator hopes to find organic molecules and amino acids that could shed light on the origin of life on Earth.