A NASA spacecraft capsule touched down in the Utah desert on September 24, ending a seven-year mission to return samples from a near-Earth asteroid. The sample return capsule from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed at the Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 ET. The landing took place 10 minutes after the capsule, traveling at 44,500 kilometers per hour, entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The landing occurred three minutes before the capsule’s nominal return time. During a webcast of the landing, NASA said the main parachute opened at a much higher altitude than planned: about 6,000 meters versus the expected 1,500 meters. It’s unclear what caused the deviation from these plans, but the images show that the capsule is intact on the surface.

The capsule separated from the lead OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at 6:42 a.m. ET after mission managers gave final clearance for its release. Twenty minutes later, the lead spacecraft performed a “fallback” maneuver to safely fly past Earth.

NASA launched OSIRIS-REx aboard Atlas 5 in September 2016, and the spacecraft reached Bennu in 2018. After examining the asteroid’s surface from orbit, scientists selected a spot on the surface to perform a touch-and-go maneuver; Here, the spacecraft will descend to the surface and briefly submerge a sampler to collect material from the asteroid beforehand. I’m retreating.

This sampling maneuver was performed in October 2020 and worked almost too well; It collected so much material from Bennu’s surface that engineers expedited the insertion of the sample container into the return capsule after images showed material leaking into space.

Project officials said that although they could not measure how much material was in the sample box, they believed they far exceeded the 60 grams of material required by the mission. OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona said at a Sept. 22 briefing that the mission estimated the capsule contained 250 grams of material, plus/minus 101 grams. “Even at the low end of this final estimate, we are significantly exceeding our mission requirements,” he said.

The sample container will be transported to a storage facility at Johnson Space Center on September 25. Here, scientists will begin the arduous process of sample extraction to prevent contamination and begin scientific research. But NASA has warned that those efforts could be put on hold if the federal government shuts down due to funding cuts on October 1. The primary OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will now embark on an extended mission called OSIRIS-APEX. In 2029, it will travel to another near-Earth asteroid, Apophis, which will arrive shortly after the asteroid passes by Earth.