The 6-Second Touchdown That Rewrote Solar System History

Asteroid, Bennu, OSIRISREx On October 20, 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touched asteroid Bennu for just six seconds, and the surface gave way beneath it. What it collected in that brief moment changed how scientists understand the early solar system. In this space documentary, we follow the OSIRIS-REx mission from the choice of Bennu to the shock of finding a boulder-covered rubble pile instead of a sandy surface, the fully autonomous touchdown at Nightingale crater, and the return of 121.6 grams of asteroid sample to the Utah desert in September 2023. We discover what the Bennu sample did reveal, and we also explore the open questions about where Bennu's parent body formed, and what comes next as the same spacecraft, now OSIRIS-APEX, heads for asteroid Apophis in 2029. Subscribe for more breakdowns of the universe's greatest mysteries. Sources/Credits: NASA OSIRIS-REx and OSIRIS-APEX Missions NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona NASA/Lockheed Martin NASA/Johnson Space Center NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Dan Gallagher #OSIRISREx #Bennu #NASA #Asteroid #spacedocumentary