Nasa’s Osiris-Rex capsule will come hurtling into Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday at more than 15 times the speed of a rifle bullet.
It will make a fireball in the sky as it does so, but a heat shield and parachutes will slow the descent and bring it into a gentle touchdown in Utah’s West Desert.
The capsule is carrying a handful of dust from asteroid Bennu.
It is hoped the space rock sample can inform the most profound of questions: Where do we come from?
“When we get the 250g (9oz) of asteroid Bennu back on Earth, we’ll be looking at material that existed before our planet, maybe even some grains that existed before our Solar System,” says Prof Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator on the mission.
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