{"id":1209294,"date":"2023-12-06T18:08:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T23:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1209294"},"modified":"2023-12-06T18:08:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T23:08:03","slug":"nasas-asteroid-mission-struck-its-target-but-then-dodged-a-bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1209294","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s asteroid mission struck its target, but then dodged a bullet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"rss-wrap\">\n<figure class=\"intro-image intro-left\">\n  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/53210646183_766f758413_k-800x533-1.jpg\" alt=\"The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule, with its main parachute nearby, shortly after landing in Utah on September 24, 2023.\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\" style=\"font-size:0.8em\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/53210646183_766f758413_k.jpg\" class=\"enlarge-link\" data-height=\"1199\" data-width=\"1800\">Enlarge<\/a> <span class=\"sep\">\/<\/span> The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule, with its main parachute nearby, shortly after landing in Utah on September 24, 2023. (credit: Keegan Barber\/NASA)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<div><a name=\"page-1\" \/><\/div>\n<p>This was the moment Dante Lauretta had waited for nearly 20 years to see. A small robotic capsule was on the way back to Earth with rocks scooped from an asteroid, and Lauretta was eager to get his hands on the samples.<\/p>\n<p>Led by Lauretta, scientists carefully designed the billion-dollar mission to bring home pieces of a carbon-rich asteroid thought to contain organic molecules, the building blocks necessary for life to take hold. This NASA mission, known by the acronym OSIRIS-REx, launched from Earth in 2016, collected samples from a roughly 1,600-foot-wide (500-meter) asteroid named Bennu in 2020, then set a course for return to Earth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2023\/09\/nasa-spacecraft-returns-to-earth-with-pieces-of-an-asteroid\/\">On September 24<\/a>, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft released the canister containing the asteroid samples to plunge into the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere, while the mothership steered onto a course to take it safely back into deep space for a follow-up mission to explore a different asteroid at the end of the 2020s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/?p=1989304#p3\">Read 24 remaining paragraphs<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/?p=1989304&amp;comments=1\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Ars Technica &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/?p=1989304\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA\u2019s asteroid mission struck its target, but then dodged a bullet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Enlarge \/ The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule, with its main parachute nearby, shortly after landing in Utah on September 24, 2023. (credit: Keegan Barber\/NASA) This was the moment Dante Lauretta had waited for nearly 20 years to see. A small &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1209294\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1209295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,110],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-1209294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-ars-technica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1209295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}