There was only one little problem: NASA couldn’t get the canister containing its prized rocks open. After months of tinkering, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston finally dislodged two stuck fasteners that had kept the pieces of the asteroid out of researchers’ hands. It’s open!” NASA’s Planetary Science Division posted Friday on X, along with a photograph of the slate-colored bounty of dust and small rocks inside the canister. “We are overjoyed with the success,” NASA’s chief OSIRIS-REx sample curator, Nicole Lunning, said in a statement. It took more than seven years and roughly $1 billion to bring back a sample from Bennu, a space rock formed during the earliest days of the solar system.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 21, 2024 19:35 UTC