(music throughout) After imaging asteroid Bennu for the last time on April 7th, 2021,
OSIRIS-REx fired its thrusters on May 10th on its 2 year journey to deliver asteroid samples to Earth.
(Navigation Team Chief Pete Antreasian) The ADM burn has completed
We had a nominal ADM burn,
and we’re bringing our samples home!
(applause)
(narrator) This burn thrust the spacecraft away from the asteroid at 600 miles per hour.
OSIRIS-REx will then orbit the Sun twice before reaching Earth on September 24th, 2023.
It will send the capsule containing pieces of Bennu through Earth’s atmosphere
to the Utah Test and Training Range, where it will be retrieved
and taken to the curation facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
These samples will be distributed to labs around the world for analysis for generations to come.