NASA Scientists Celebrate Successful End to OSIRIS-REx’s Decades-Long Mission

“Today capped the end of an almost 20-year adventure for me,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The sample return capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission shortly after touching down in the desert at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway on Sept. 24, 2023. Keegan Barber/NASA via Getty Images

Once again, Earth experienced asteroid fragments speeding through its atmosphere to an empty patch of North American desert. But instead of crashing in a destructive fireball, these bits of space rock rode a controlled descent safe inside a man-made capsule.

NASA welcomed its first asteroid sample delivery on Sept. 24 with the return of its OSIRIS-REx—the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer.