Scientists from NASA and around the country had some of its final tests Wednesday before the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returns to earth and lands in Utah’s west desert with a piece of the asteroid Bennu.
Federal officials explained the asteroid sample will land somewhere in a 37 by 9-mile ellipse in the Utah desert, before it's flown to a “clean room,” a sterile, sealed room within the military installation, before being analyzed out of state.
Melissa Morris, the program executive director with NASA, said the results of the OSIRIS-REx project could start to give answers for how the universe began.
“NASA invests in small body missions like OSIRIS-REx, to investigate the rich population of asteroids in our solar system that can give us clues about how the solar system formed and evolved. It's our own origin story,” said Morris.
After a 7-year journey, the asteroid sample is expected to make its landing on September 24.
