The actual asteroid sample won’t be revealed until October 11 in a live NASA broadcast. How to see the last ‘ring of fire’ eclipse until 2046 (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) Shuji Kajiyama/AP The annular eclipse, in which the moon passes in front of the sun leaving only a golden ring around its edges, was visible to wide areas across the continent. Millions of Asians watched as a rare 'ring of fire' eclipse crossed their skies early Monday.

The moon slides across the sun, showing a blazing halo of light, during an annular eclipse at a waterfront park in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, May 21, 2012. It’s really spectacular to have all that material there.” “There’s a lot of abundant material outside the TAGSAM head that’s interesting in its own right. “The very best ‘problem’ to have is that there is so much material, it’s taking longer than we expected to collect it,” said Christopher Snead, deputy OSIRIS-REx curation lead, in a statement. This led scientists to believe they might be able to do a quick analysis of any material they discovered upon opening the canister - and there’s plenty of it before they even reach the bulk of the sample, located within the mechanism head, which means the scientists will need to take their time to collect all of the material. When OSIRIS-REx briefly used its TAGSAM, or Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism head, to disturb the surface of Bennu and collect a sample in October 2020, it gathered so much material that particles could be seen slowly drifting off into space before the head was stowed in the canister.

But near-Earth asteroids also pose a threat to our planet, so understanding their composition and orbits is key to unlocking the best ways to deflect space rocks on a collision course with Earth. The mission team whisked away the canister the day after its arrival to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which has a clean room specially built for careful analysis of the cosmic sample.Īsteroids are remnants from the formation of the solar system, offering insights into what those chaotic, early days were like as the planets formed and settled into place. (Total trip distance: some 3.86 billion miles.) The sample’s historic landing in the Utah desert September 24 marked the culmination of NASA’s 7-year OSIRIS-Rex mission, which traveled to Bennu some 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) from Earth, touched down on the asteroid and then flew back by Earth for the sample drop. That unexpected debris could reveal key insights about the asteroid before the primary sample is analyzed. When they opened the canister containing the sample on September 26, the researchers discovered an abundance of dark, fine-grained material on the inside of the container’s lid and base surrounding the mechanism used to collect the extraterrestrial rocks and soil.

Scientists have taken their first glimpse of a sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu - and stumbled upon a good bit more than they expected.

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