The first U.S. asteroid sample, delivered by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to Earth on Sept. 24, has arrived at its permanent home at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be cared for, stored, and distributed to scientists worldwide. The sample arrived in Houston at 12:40 pm ET (11:40 am CT) aboard a U.S. …
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) marked the completion of an important step on the path to spacecraft assembly, test, and launch operations this week at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland.
Payloads: BioFabrication Facility (BFF): The crew gained access to the BFF interior and performed steps to unclog the Smart Pump Tips and installed Bio-Ink Syringes. Using 3D biological printers to produce usable human organs has long been a dream of scientists and doctors around the globe; however, printing the tiny, complex structures found inside human …
The ten residents living aboard the International Space Station have a jam-packed Monday as three Expedition 69 crew members are completing their final duties before departure and others complete an array of health exams and repairs to orbital payloads. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio began his day replacing clogged pumps on the BioFabrication Facility. After lunch, …
Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally joined all four RS-25 engines onto the core stage for NASA’s Artemis II Moon rocket. The flight test is the agency’s first crewed mission under Artemis. Technicians added the first engine to NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage Sept. 11. Teams installed …
NASA's OSIRIS-REx clean room team has finished disassembling the sample capsule and packaging its components, including the unopened sample canister. Now packed in shipping containers – along with the environmental samples the recovery team collected around the capsule's landing site this morning – the items are scheduled to be delivered on Monday, Sept. 25, to …
View or download photos from the Sept. 24 OSIRIS-REx sample-landing activities. View or download OSIRIS-REx mission photos from a curated collection.
At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down. Once the helicopter line was detached …
With the sample secured and the area around the sample capsule deemed safe, NASA's OSIRIS-REx team completed the detailed and highly coordinated recovery process (which they have practiced many times in the past year). They placed the 100-pound capsule into a metal cradle and wrapped it in multiple sheets of Teflon and then a tarp. …
Having received the capsule's precise coordinates from radar trackers when it landed, NASA's OSIRIS-REx helicopter recovery team arrived at its landing location within 20 minutes. A U.S. Air Force munitions specialist was the first person to disembark a helicopter. His task was to identify and clear the area around the capsule of any possible munitions …
