NASA is set to reveal the contents of a cannister returned from a 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid - which could hold clues to the origins of life. The largest ever sample taken from beyond the moon could aid an asteroid-deflection effort in the unlikely event it is heading for earth.
A senior member of the space mission's team described the capsule's landing last month as like 'seeing an old friend'.'It was just great to see it. I did want to give it a hug, but, you know, I knew I'd be all sooty,' joked Dante Lauretta, Osiris-Rex principal investigator at the University of Arizona, on 24 September.
'And we were trying to collect environmental samples, so that really wouldn't have gone over well,' he addedHe described the moment as 'amazing and emotional'.'I was there when it was nothing but a PowerPoint on a slide in a proposal that we were submitting to NASA.'You can watch the moment the first NASA crew members approached the container in the Utah desert below.
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