Question

october 29, 2020
marcia dunn
the associated press

cape canaveral, fla. (ap) — a nasa spacecraft tucked more than 2 pounds of
asteroid samples into a capsule for return to earth after losing some of its precious
loot because of a jammed lid, scientists said thursday.

they won’t know the precise amount of the cosmic haul from asteroid bennu, more
than 200 million miles (322 million kilometers) away, until the capsule parachutes into
the utah desert in 2023.

“we’ve still got a lot of work to do” to get the samples back safely, said lead scientist
dante lauretta of the university of arizona.

the spacecraft osiris-rex won’t depart bennu’s neighborhood until march at the
earliest, when the asteroid and earth are properly aligned.

osiris-rex collected so much material from bennu’s rough surface on oct. 20 that
rocks got wedged in the rim of the container and jammed it open. some of the
samples were seen escaping into space, so flight controllers moved up the crucial
stowing operation

based on images, scientists believe osiris-rex grabbed 4 1/2 pounds (2 kilograms) of
rubble, a full load. the minimum requirement had been 2 ounces (60 grams) — a
handful or two.

“just imagine a sack of flour at the grocery store,” lauretta said of the initial haul.

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