'History Was Made': OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Touches Asteroid Bennu, Collects Sample

LITTLETON, Colo. (CBS4/AP) -- The rocket scientists in Littleton are celebrating after OSIRIS-REx -- the spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin -- touched an asteroid Tuesday afternoon. OSIRIS-REx scooped up a sample from the asteroid surface and took off seconds later. Scientists say it appears the mission went flawlessly.

The probe started chasing the asteroid named Bennu two years ago -- and then had to spend a year find a spot to land.

We talked with NASA scientist Dr. Lucy Lim on CBSN Denver about the challenges of landing OSIRIS-REx -- which is the size of a van.

"Our safe spot that we're looking to touch the asteroid, you can do a handful of parking spaces. So you're parking a van and a couple of parking spaces, you know, may be not super. When you're in the van driving it, you know, [you're] close up. We're doing this from, you know, 100 million miles away," said Dr. Lim. "And it's in three dimensions and, yeah, there are boulders everywhere so that definitely makes it a much trickier problem."

OSIRIS-REx touched Bennu for just a matter of seconds and used nitrogen gas fired into the robotic collector to stir up and capture some of the asteroid's surface materials.

"History was made tonight," one scientist exclaimed after OSIRIS-REx fired its thrusters and backed away from the asteroid.

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to depart the asteroid in March 2021 and return to earth in September of 2023. The return capsule containing the sample will separate from OSIRIS-REx and collected in Utah.

Scientists are eager to study material from a carbon-rich asteroid like dark Bennu, which is believed to be 4.5 billion years old. It could give scientists clues as to what the solar system was like as it was formed, what chemical building blocks jumpstarted life, how organic material gets transported within the solar system, and what Mars and Venus may have looked like in the past.

(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)