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 enough to open it progressively and ensure it’s safe and pristine,” says Pierre Haenecour, a co-investigator in the OSIRIS-REx collaboration. He’s a member of the quick-look team at Johnson that will do the initial imaging and chemical analysis of any fine particles that are clinging to the outside of the canister.

Inside, that canister could hold as much as 9 ounces (250 grams) of space rocks and dust. Bennu is a lifeless rock, and Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist and head of the OSIRIS-REx team, emphasizes that they’re not expecting to find biological material. “No life forms that we know of could survive that kind of environment. We’re more worried about Earth biology contaminating the sample,” he said at a NASA post-landing press conference on Sunday. Still, Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid that has been around for billions of years and could reveal information about the assembly of rocky planets—including Earth—in the early solar system.

After a pulse-pounding descent, during which the atmosphere heated the capsule to a scorching 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it touched down—charred but intact—at 8:52 am Mountain time at a Department of Defense testing range in Utah. Military personnel were charged with checking that no unexploded ordnance lay within the landing area and that no toxic gases were emanating from the still-hot craft.