Sample Return
Don’t Bother Trying to Destroy Rubble Pile Asteroids
The asteroids in our Solar System are survivors. They've withstood billions of years of collisions. The surviving asteroids are divided…
Perseverance Takes a Selfie to Show off Some of its Samples
One of the main jobs for the Perseverance Mars rover past few weeks has been collecting carefully selected samples of…
Perseverance is Putting its Samples Onto the Surface of Mars, So a Future Helicopter can Pick Them Up
At this point in its mission, NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover has collected almost 50% of its samples. The rover is…
Eight Missions are Getting Extensions, Most Exciting: OSIRIS-REx is Going to Asteroid Apophis
NASA has granted mission extensions to eight different planetary missions, citing the continued excellent operations of the spacecraft, but more…
This is Where the Mars Sample Return Mission Could be Landing
NASA's Perseverance Rover is busy exploring Jezero Crater on Mars. Part of its mission is to collect samples for retrieval…
50-Year-Old Lunar Samples are Opened up for the First Time
NASA's Apollo missions to the Moon brought back about 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of samples, including rocks, rock cores, rock,…
Perseverance has Collected its First Sample of Mars and Prepared it for Return to Earth… Eventually
It's another first for NASA. In early September, the Perseverance rover successfully used its robotic arm and drill to drill…
Perseverance Drills Another Hole, and This Time the Sample is Intact
After failing in its first try, the Perseverance rover just successfully obtained a rock sample from the Martian surface that…
Just A Couple Of Weeks From Now, OSIRIS-REx Will Grab A Sample From Bennu
NASA is about to achieve another first for their organization. In about three weeks time, on October 20th, the OSIRIS-REx…