NASA's Osiris-Rex robot lands on asteroid

This big space rock is an asteroid. Its name is Bennu. NASA sent a spaceship to asteroid Bennu. The spaceship's name is OSIRIS-REx. Scientists control the ship from Earth. It left on 8th September 2016. It travelled 330 million kilometres to the asteroid.

Dante Lauretta: “And so this is what is actually at the end of that long robotic arm. You can see it's about 30 centimetres or about a foot in diameter. And this is what we placed onto the surface of the asteroid.”

OSIRIS-REx has a special arm. It pushed the arm onto the asteroid. This broke the rock on Bennu. The arm took small pieces of rock from the asteroid. Then, it left the asteroid. It is bringing 400 grammes of asteroid Bennu back to Earth. OSIRIS-REx will arrive in 2023. Weniger anzeigen