Space NASA unveils newly returned carbon-rich asteroid sample

NASA has offered the public a preliminary look at the contents of a sealed capsule on October 11 that was returned to Earth in the past month. This capsule held a carbon-rich soil sample taken from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, including materials containing water-bearing clay minerals.

As reported by Reuters, portion of the material, which was collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago, was presented to an audience at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. This unveiling took place just over two weeks after the capsule parachuted into the Utah desert.

The landing of the return capsule marked the conclusion of a seven-year collaborative mission between NASA and the University of Arizona. It was a significant event as only the third asteroid sample to be returned to Earth for analysis, with the previous two being from missions carried out by Japan's space agency in 2010 and 2020.