How NASA Is Protecting Its Precious Asteroid Bennu Sample

On Sunday, a capsule carrying a one-of-a-kind sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu careened through the atmosphere and landed in the Utah desert. But the OSIRIS-REx mission isn’t quite over: That precious cargo needs to be kept safe, then carefully opened one step at a time, before any science can be done.

Technicians at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will now begin dismantling the capsule, piece by piece, to get down to an interior canister containing the asteroid sample. The methodical process is so that someone doesn’t accidentally harm the canister or compromise future scientific research. “We are really excited and impatient to see the sample, but we’re patient

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