Nasa’s first asteroid sample return could help solve mystery of life

On Sunday morning, Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft released a capsule the size of a car tyre that held an infinitely precious cargo – a small amount of space rock that could help explain the origins of life on Earth. The capsule hurtled into Earth’s atmosphere at more than 27,000mph, before a heat shield and parachute slowed its descent and it dropped softly onto the ground at a Utah military training area at 8:52am local time. The successful landing marks the end of the capsule’s seven-year journey through space – and the first time a Nasa mission has successfully retrieved material from an asteroid. Japan has recovered asteroid samples twice before – gathering less than a milligram of material in 2010 and a few grams from a near-Earth asteroid named Ryugu a decade later. Scientists hope Osiris-Rex’s delivery, taken from the Bennu asteroid in 2020, will deliver an abundance of new material – the team is hoping for up to 250g of cosmic dirt that could reveal clues about the birth of the solar system. Three quarters of the sample will be kept for future research, on the assumption that diagnostic tools can only get better.