OsirisRex capsule ends seven-year journey from Bennu which could unleash the force of 22 atom bombs
Nasa’s OsirisRex capsule touched down three minutes ahead of schedule at 15:52pm BST on Sunday afternoon after a seven-year four billion-mile journey to collect samples from a killer asteroid Bennu.
But when Nasa blasted off in 2016 to drill for space dust on a giant rock, experts could never have expected to need the help of a rock giant.
The mission ran into trouble after reaching Bennu in 2020 and finding the surface was strewn with boulders, leaving mission controllers scratching their heads about where to land.
Step forward Sir Brian May, the Queen guitarist, who had used Nasa’s public images of Bennu to create 3D stereoscopic pictures, giving unprecedented new detail of the tumbling space rock.