OSIRIS-REx collects samples from asteroid Bennu.
NASA scientists confirmed Wednesday the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully made contact with the asteroid every day earlier, touching the face to half an hour and accumulating dust and stalks from the surface.
The spacecraft’s performance in the asteroid Bennu, that is just about as broad as the Empire State Building is tall, so was notable. Since the asteroid is really modest, its own gravity is small, which disrupts orbital maneuvering from the spacecraft around what is, basically, a rubble heap.
Despite these struggles, in a period of 320 million km Tuesday, NASA scientists and engineers mimicked that a spacecraft to autonomously get down inside just one meter of its own goal region.
