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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Touchdown!

• https://www.dailymail.co.uk By MARLENE LENTHANG

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a historic landing on the asteroid Bennu's surface Tuesday night

Around 6.15pm OSIRIS-Rex descended onto the asteroid and extended its 11-foot robot arm, which collected rocks and dirt samples from the surface for mere seconds, before the craft launched back into space   

This marks the first time the US has gathered samples from an asteroid  

Asteroid contains material from the early solar system and could provide insight into origin of life on Earth  

The lengthy descent mission took 4.5 hours and the samples will return to Earth by 2023

Bennu is located more than 200 million miles away from Earth 


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