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NASA’s first mission to return a sample from an ancient asteroid
is the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource
Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx.
The satellite briefly touched down on
the asteroid Bennu yesterday,
collecting somewhere between 60g and 2kg of material from
the asteroid's surface.
During the critical touchdown stages, uplink to and downlink
from the satellite was via the
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.
The image above is a mosaic image of Bennu, composed of 12 images collected in December 2018 by the OSIRIS-REx
spacecraft from a range of 24km.
(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
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