Scientists believe Bennu is an ancient [ .. relic of the solar system's formation, and may contain elements involved in the origin of life here on Earth.

[NARRATOR]: Our solar system consists of eight They also estimate, planets and their moons, due to its frequent .. comets, that there i.. but nonetheless real chance Dwarf pl.. that sometime in the next 200 years or so, and co.. Bennu will collide with Earth.

all or..

There are also well over a million rocky and airless Was it ancient asteroids crashing.. remnants from the early that introduced the bu.. formation of the solar system, Will such a collision happen again?

And if so, These metallic and or icy bodies are often referred to as minor planets.

To answer these and many other critical questions, However, they are not planets at a.. a team of scientists and engineers These are asteroids.

have been on a crucial mission to bring back material from Bennu One such asteroid is Bennu.

to be analyzed on Earth.

Tumbling and falling through space, Bennu is a near-Earth asteroid, passing relatively close to our planet about every six years.

[ ♪ AMBIENT SYNTH MUSIC ] [NASA ANNOUNCER]: This is it.

We are just 15 minutes away from the OSIRIS-REx sample return, a journey of nearly 4 billion miles.

[NARRATOR]: In a remote part of the Utah desert, a team of scientists have gathered to witness a final step of the United States' first ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.

After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet.

Deliver the asteroid sample to Earth, while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants.

On this day, as the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flew by Earth, it released its sample return capsule, thereby ending its primary mission.

[NASA HOST]: Buckle up and get ready for the ride of entry, descent, and landing.

This is 13 minutes of crazy descent, punishing, deceleration of our spacecraft.

[NARRATOR]: The capsule, which is estimated to hold about a cup of material from Bennu, will land within the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range.

[NASA HOST]: It's been on its own for four hours.

There's nothing we can do at this point.

It's coming in rain or shine.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] milestone, SRC has entered the Earth's atmosphere.

[NASA HOST]: And we actually have a visual now.

This is from our infrared tracking camera on the WB57, our high altitude plane.

At about 47,000 feet, MSL means sea level, getting a great view of that SRC heating up as it enters into Earth's atmosphere.

The punishing deceleration that spacecraft, that SRC, is experiencing right now, as it comes in at about 27,650 miles an hour, you can see it glowing brightly in the sky.

[ ♪ SYNTH MUSIC FADES ♪ ] [ ♪ UPBEAT INSTRUMENTAL GUITAR MUSIC ♪ ] [DANTE]: I had been interested in origin of life, life in the universe, really back to college.

And I was here at the University of Arizona I was an undergraduate student.

And I was paying my own way through college.

I was a short order breakfast cook.

Even as a senior, I hadn't had research experience or anything like that.

Really didn't know what I was going to do with m.. And I got an undergraduate research space grant.

And I started working on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

And that just blew my mind.

I was like, I couldn't believe that was a job.

I couldn't believe I was getting paid to think about aliens, civilizations, elsewhere in the galaxy.

And I was hooked.

I was like, this is what I want to..

The fact that this is actually a legitimate field of investigation.

And I was told no.

Hell no.

You can't study SETI.

That's career suicide.

Forget it.

Even though it was taboo, I was like, This is what I really want to do.

This is what's calling me.

This was in like 1992.

In the mid-1990s, they thought they had discovered life on a Martian meteorite.

And astrobiology took off.

And I was like, All right.

Now we get into it.

And a good friend of mine, uh, Danny Glavin, who's a key member of the OSIRIS-REx team now, he leads the Organic Analysis Working Group.

I met him on an expedition to Antarctica.

And we were out there hunting for meteorites in the deep field, six weeks living in a tent.

He was my tent mate.

And he was studying the amino acids from this Martian meteorite.

And when we were out hunting meteorites, we came across one that was just under the surface of the ice.

And it's a black rock.

It was a sunny day.

And it was melting the ice around it.

And he, got really worried.

He's like, "This is contamination."

He's like, "This is being, it's exchanging amin.. with the Antarctic ice right here in front of our eyes."

He's like, "Everything we're trying to do, it's imp.. And I was like, Oh man, like, if we-- how are we going to study origins of life if these meteorites are instantly contaminated when they reach the surface of the Earth?

And I was like, You got to go get one.

[ ♪ AMBIENT SYNTH MUSIC SWELLS ♪] I had been here at the University of Arizona for just a few years.

I was a young assistant professor and I got a phone call from Mike Drake, my boss, the lab director.

And he said, "You know, hey, I've got a representative from Lockheed Martin in my office."

We had just won the Phoenix Mars Lander Mission, which was a huge milestone for the University of Arizona.

And Lockheed was our partner.

And Mike's like, "They want to build on the success of the Phoenix Mission and they want to go after asteroid sample ret.. And we want to bring you in."

And I was like, Wow, the universe, literally the universe is calling.

[ ♪ SPACE SYNTH MUSIC SWELLS AND ENDS ♪ ] [NARRATOR]: In 2004, Michael Drake, Dante Lauretta, and a team of scientists and students set out to compete for funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, to pursue the dream of returning a sample from an asteroid back to Earth.

But they were far from alone in this quest.

[DANTE]: It's about two dozen teams that go into these things and one of them gets to fly.

And the competition is fierce.

People have been thinking about their missions for years.

We were just getting started, but I was hooked.

[NARRATOR]: The team hurriedly wrote a proposal in just three months.

The science was good and hopes were high.

[DANTE]: First proposal just bombed.

And it was like, you know, thanks, but no thanks.

[NARRATOR]: A year later, NASA offered the same opportunity.

This time, team from Tucson made it to the final round.

But in the end, only one mission would be chosen.

[DANTE]: We lost.

You know, even though we were category one, it was, uh, it was cost that killed us.

We were just too expensive, NASA said.

You didn't fit in the program.

So Mike went to work.

[NARRATOR]: Michael Drake had heard of a new NASA program entitled "New Frontiers."

A program offering twice the funding and one that would consider a first-ever asteroid sample return mission.

[DANTE]: And I knew at that moment, I was like, okay, this is ours, right?

We've got the pole position, but these teams are still hungry.

I said, we need to run harder and faster and longer than anybody else.

And we just committed ourselves to winning that program.

And it took three years.

And then in May of 2011, we got the news that OSIRIS-REx is gonna fly.

Seven years after that phone call from Mike in 2004.

[ ♪ DREAMY SYNTH MUSIC ♪ ] [NARRATOR]: OSIRIS-REx was going to fly.

Eventually.

What NASA had funded was a billion dollar 14 year mission to travel to, study, and collect a sample from an asteroid.

And then return that sample to Earth.

It would be the first of its kind in the United States, and it would be headquartered at the University of Arizona in Tucson, under the direction of Michael Drake.

Dr. Drake was already a leader in the field of extraterrestrial geology, having studied lunar rocks, meteors, and the moons of Saturn.

He helped map the surface of Mars and was part of a team that detected the presence of ice below the Martian surface.

But to send a spacecraft to an asteroid, collect a sample, and return it to Earth, was Michael Drake's dream.

[MICHAEL]: This is a sample return mission.

The real holy grail is to return, and we promised NASA at least 60 grams we'll probably return a lot more than that to Earth in the year 2023 in September.

The team is multi-generational, so I have young people.

Dante Lauretta, my deputy PI, is 25 years younger than I am, and then we'll have grad students, undergraduates, maybe as many as 100 undergraduates employed by the project.

[DANTE]: We're going to work for the next five years to build the spacecraft, to build the instruments, to get the ground system ready.

We're going to strap it onto a giant explosive and send it off into space.

And that is a hold your breath moment because it's completely out of our control.

We show up in Florida with a spacecraft, stick it on the top of that rocket, and trust the rocket team knows what they're doing.

And they do, they're professionals, and they will get the spacecraft off the ground.

But there's always the chance that something's gone wrong, there's something, a valve has stuck or something, and the system malfunctions, and either your spacecraft gets dropped into the ocean or explodes upon launch.

So that's the really big one.

Once we're in space, we're much more comfor.. That's the environment the spacecraft is built for, to operate.

[NARRATOR]: The OSIRIS-REx team had a mere five years to design, build, and deliver their instruments for the la.. scheduled in September 2016.

Just months into the mission, Michael Drake dies.

[DANTE]: He was my mentor, my friend, our leader, uh, the director of the Lunar and Planetary Lab, a visionary, a world-class scientist.

And he believed in the future, right?

It was a big part of who he was.

And the next generation was enormously important for him.

So, it was his dream.

OSIRIS-REx was his dream.

And he invited me to be part of it.

He believed in me, he told me that.

I mean, I visited him shortly before he passed away in the hospital.

And I said, "We need to talk about what's gonna happen with the mission."

And I used, you know, kind..

I said, "This is a red risk."

That's what we call the biggest risk a program faces, one that you often can't solve without external resources.

And I said, "What's our mitigation plan?"

And he's like, "It's you."

So, I couldn't let him down.

Obviously, the team suffered a major setback in September when we lost our leader, Mike Drake.

And I was then asked by NASA to step up into the role of principal investigator.

So, a new leader changes the team dynamics ..

So it took a while for us to regroup, mourn, and to focus on our objectives and get the team back up to operations.

[HEATHER]: OSIRIS-REx is a PI-led mission.

Now, NASA headquarters is obviously the funding agency.

And we have a partner Goddard Space Flight Center that helps us with the project management on a day-to-day basis.

But the overall responsibility of delivering.. within the promised budget and on schedule is the responsibility of the University of Arizona and the PI, Dante Lauretta.

[DANTE]: The biggest hurdle for me has been assuming the leadership position.

There's a saying that it's lonely at the top and for the first time in my life, I understand what that means, because the buck stops here.

When I say something, even if it's an offhand remark in a hallway, the team will take it as direction and guidance.

And the next thing I know, they'll be redesigning the project because of some crazy thought that I expressed out loud.

So I need to be very careful about what I say.

You know, I cannot often think out loud unless I make absolutely clear to the team that that's what I'm doing and I'm not giving them guidance.

So we're building test units of all of our instruments, all of our key spacecraft components, and we are testing them in flight-like environments.

So we'll shake them harder than the rocket will shake it.

We'll bake it hotter than the sun will bake it.

You know, we're going to shock it.

We're going to, uh, throw all kinds of electromagnetic interference at it.

We're going to make sure it can perform in the harsh space environment.

That gets us a qualified engineering unit that we can then go and assemble the flight unit based on the experience.

I think it's time now.

So in exactly 999 days from this moment, our launch window will open up and OSIRIS-REx will be on his journey into the inner solar system to asteroid Bennu to get his treasure and bring it back to Earth for us.

[NARRATOR]: The OSIRIS-REx timeline includes five years to design and build the instruments and spacecraft, two years to reach Bennu, a year and a half mapping and studying the asteroid before grabbing the sample, then another two and a half years to return to Earth in September of 2023.

The mission's name is an acronym of its concepts and goals.

Origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification, security, Regolith Explorer.

Five instruments on the deck of the spacecraft are designed to explore the nearly half mile diameter asteroid.

These instruments included cameras to see the surface, spectrometers to identify minerals, chemicals and elements, altimeters to map the asteroid and an arm with a collector to gather the sample.

One of the most critical of these instruments system of three cameras called OCAMs.

[BASHAR]: We have one mission, it's going to go there, it's going to figure out how to operate around that asteroid, it's going to figure out the asteroid itself, it's going to decide where we want to go, it's going to go there, it's gonna grab that sample, it's going to come back to Earth.

All of those things, any one of which have been a, you know, a really complicated thing to do, we're going to do them all at once.

So, this camera system is meant to enable that whole feat.

[NARRATOR]: While the mission is led by the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, it is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, outside Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colorado was tasked with building the spacecraft, and designing how to grab two ounces of surface material, or regolith, and getting it safely back to Earth.

In April 2014, all of the teams gathered there for a final design review.

[ED]: My name is Ed Beshore.

I am the Deputy Principal Investigator and I'm going to be talking with you.

This is our last presentation of the day and we're going to talk about science operations on the ground data processing.

[DANTE]: It's been a long couple of weeks.

We've been here now seven days.

It's been very thorough and intensive, but I think it's going really well.

The kind of review, like this critical design review, is essential for the success of OSIRIS-REx or any other spacecraft mission.

This is a chance for the team which has been very narrowly focused on what they need to get done, to have a chance for people to come in with a fresh set of eyes, scrub all of their assumptions and all of their plans and really provide important guidance to make sure no mistakes are overlooked.

[RICH]: It's actually NASA's chance to come in and give us an assessment of how well the design is done.

Do you have enough confidence in the design that they should pay to have it built?

[ED]: Is the site going to be safe for the flight system?

So that's another key question that we need to answer.

And if you're lucky, will you find sufficient sampling material there?

So you've got a deliverable site, you've got a safe site, but will you actually find sample material?

[RICH]: Lockheed Martin had developed something called the TAGSAM.

It's touch and go sample acquisition mechanism.

It's something that we developed to actually do a sample without needing a scoop or needing to be attached to what we're sampling.

[RICH]: Once we're sure we have the sample, the SRC, this is the sample return capsule, is opened up like a clam shell.

The arm articulates, puts the sample into the SRC, it's latched down passively in the SRC.

We cut the head loose then, back the arm out, close the lid to the SRC and are ready to come home.

The capsule, its main purpose is to protect the sample on its way back to Earth and then Earth entry, especially Earth entry.

The PICA and the heat shield help us get through the initial high-intensity heating, coming through the atmosphere.

[DANTE]: The next step is we start building the spacecraft.

So real flight hardware starts coming in here at Lockheed Martin and starts getting assembled into a vehicle that we're going to launch into space.

[RADIO VOICE]: Three, two, one, ignition main stage.

[NARRATOR]: NASA's first successful launch of a spacecraft was in 1958.

They've been leading space exploration ever since and the University of Arizona has been there from the beginning.

[PRESIDENT KENNEDY]: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

[MELISSA]: When President Kennedy made his announcement that we were going to send people to the moon by the end of the decade, so the NASA engineers kind of looked around the country and there was no one who knew anything about the moon.

The only place that really had any of the expertise they needed was here in Tucson.

Gerard Kuiper was making the maps of the moon here and then he was invited to be an experimenter on the Ranger missions.

[MICHAEL]: We have been involved in, I believe, every single NASA mission.

We haven't led every one of them, but we've been involved in every single one of them.

We may be the only university in the world that can make that statement.

[ANNOUNCER]: Two, one, zero, and liftoff.

[NARRATOR]: After the moon, NASA and the University of Arizona focused on our neighboring planets.

One of the biggest breakthroughs came in 2008, when the Phoenix Mars mission successfully landed on Mars.

[MELISSA]: It was the first mission to be run by a public university, and it's not a coincidence that that happened here in Tucson, where for 50 years we had been building up the expertise in order to do a mission like that.

The road to OSIRIS-REx was a long one.

It didn't happen overnight, it didn't happen instantly.

There were a lot of tries and fails before Mike Drake and Dante Lauretta got that mission accepted, but I think Phoenix was key in getting that acceptance.

[NARRATOR]: William Boynton, a veteran of the Phoenix Mars mission, has been exploring planets for over 40 years.

He joined the OSIRIS-REx team as a mission instrument scientist.

[WILLIAM]: Some of the differences between this mission and others is the fact that the scientific objectives are all geared towards one particular thing, and that is to choose the best site for collecting our sample.

So all of our measurements are used for collecting the data we need.

And the best site doesn't just mean the scientifically most interesting site, it also has to be a site that we can go to safely, and it has to be a site that has a lot of small grains that we can collect with our sample collector.

We have to avoid areas of the asteroid that might be covered mostly with large rocks, since we can't really collect those large rocks.

We only get one shot to do it.

So this is why it's very important.

We lay it out and study it very, very carefully and make sure that we don't have any goof-ups.

[NARRATOR]: Space exploration has long been an international priority.

More than 50 countries have an active interest in space.

Canada, one of the first countries with a satellite, supplied the laser, or OLA, used to measure and map Bennu.

[MICHAEL]: This would be Canada's first sample return and some of the things that we will learn in dealing with this little portion of the sample that comes to Canada is very important for both the OSIRIS-REx science objectives, but also learning how to handle samples from Mars in the future, which has long been a goal of the Canadian science community.

[DANTE]: The Canadian Space Agency is a very important partner for OSIRIS-REx, but that team ran into a lot of political roadblocks.

They have a new schedule.

They're going to show up late, but we've already looked at it.

We're going to figure out how to get them into the flow They're coming in November of 2015.

They were supposed to come in in July of 2015.

So they're going to be there well after everybody else, but we'll be waiting for them.

And they're going to have to play a little catch-up in terms of the system-level testing, but we've got a plan to do that, and we look good.

We can get them on and get them out to the asteroid.

[NARRATOR]: While one international problem was solved, another unexpected geopolitical event introduced a potentially existential impact on the OSIRIS-REx mission.

[DANTE]: This job always surprises me and I had no idea how international headlines could have a direct impact on this mission.

It turns out recently Vladimir Putin and Russia decided to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea.

And it was big news in the newspapers, that's what everybody was talking about for a long time.

And I didn't realize it, but a Russian company is building the main engine for our launch vehicle, for the Atlas V, for the main stage.

So there was an embargo first and it looked like we might not be able to import that engine and get it onto our launch vehicle.

So that's a huge risk for us.

I mean, I'm not directly responsible for the launch vehicle, but I can't get to Bennu without it.

They're still in Russia, so we're watching the situation very closely.

I've been told they'll be here in August, and so that'll be a great day when they arrive.

[NARRATOR]: Despite an international conflict and political roadblock, the OSIRIS-REx team remained laser focused on building and testing the spacecraft and its instruments.

With the launch only two years away, planning and strategizing transitioned into action.

[DANTE]: So it's a very exciting time for us.

We're moving into fabrication of the actual flight hardware.

The variety of problems that start to emerge on the flight hardware, first of all you'll get performance issues.

You run an environmental test like the vibration test where you try to simulate the rocket engine and the vibration that will have on the instrument or the spacecraft.

And for example on the OCAMS they saw some particles getting on the detector being shaken off from some other component which would degrade your image quality.

So they got to get rid of all those last little design issues that they discovered on their engineering qualification models.

[MAN]: When are we most active?

What's happening?

You can see here our.. [DANTE]: Schedule management is actually more important than cost management at this point.

We're in a very healthy cost posture, but you simply can't buy more time for certain things, right?

And so we've got a fixed launch date.

We're going when we're going.

[NARRATOR]: As the launch date drew nearer, the completed instruments were sent to Lockheed Martin for installation onto the spacecraft.

Five years of meeting, designing, planning, and building were drawing to a close.

[DANTE]: Our spacecraft assembly is complete.

We've been through our environmental test program, .. we are getting ready to ship down to Florida to start integrating with the launch vehicle.

We will be packaging the spacecraft up into a shipping container.

We will load the spacecraft onto an Air Force C-17 cargo jet.

We will fly from Buckley Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado to Kennedy Space Center, where we will go into our payload handling facility and begin final preparations of the spacecraft.

Once we're in Florida, our prime objectives are to do final characterization tests, like the center of balance on the spacecraft, making sure the solar arrays deploy, and then a few last minute checkouts, and we'll fuel it up, and we'll encapsulate it in the fairing, or the nose cone of the rocket, and lift it on top of the second stage and get ready to launch.

[♪ DREAMY MUSIC PLAYING ♪] [BASHAR]: It's not a small thing to work so hard on something and then have it all come down to a single launch, a single day, a few minutes.

That's what it comes down to in this as in life.

We're very, very excited to be about to witness the launch, and we're ready.

[DANTE]: It's really wonderful to be here this morning in so many ways, this is a major milestone on a long journey.

This week's been a circus in Florida for sure, lots of cameras, lots of media attention.

We've done everything possible to make sure this goes right, so we're in the hands of the universe now.

[WILLIAM]: I am really, really excited about this.

I mean, it's something we've been working at a long time.

I've been involved in a fair number of launches, but they're always exciting.

Greatest hope really is we're going to bring back a sample, which is really going to be a gangbusters sample.

It's going to have wonderful organic molecules in it and things like that that we perhaps have never seen in meteorites or some very complex molecules.

I think that's going to be really an exciting sample when we get it back and actually get it in our laboratories where we can analyze it well.

[HEATHER]: So I'm hoping that we find something we actually can't explain, and it really causes us to stop and pause and come together as human beings to unravel and understand what those signatures really are.

[ED]: I can't think of a better legacy for Mike to have.

Mike always wanted to ask the difficult questions.

And I think the mission is really a fitting tribute to his habit of asking those hard questions.

I can't think of a better way for him to be remembered than to be one of the original folks who conceived this mission.

[ANNOUNCER]: Crowds are gathering in anticipation of liftoff of the Atlas V rocket and OSIRIS-REx.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: Spacecraft to internal power.

- Roger.

- Status check.

- Go Atlas.

- Go Centaur.

- Go OSIRIS-REx.

- Everyone is go.

Standing by for launch.

10 seconds.

9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And liftoff of OSIRIS-REx.

[DANTE]: The emotional roller coaster was incredible, you know, thinking about everybody who's poured their heart and soul in this program.

Those who are with us, those who are not with us.

The moment of liftoff was like a dream come true.

We just nailed it.

[CHEERING IN THE DISTANCE] [ROCKET STATIC SOUND] [CLAPPING] [DANTE]: It was an amazing evening.

for me and for this team.

We've worked hard to get to this point.

The best times are ahead of us.

We are going to get to asteroid Bennu.

We're going to map it.

We're going to pick that site.

We're gonna get that sample and we're gonna bring it back to Earth in 2023.

So OSIRIS-REx has always had the strategy and everything we've done is go slow and careful and methodical.

And that is absolutely going-- It was just transcendental.

like, I wasn't-- It was a true out of body experience.

It was like, all of a sudden I was there with OSIRIS-REx as we lifted off into the stratosphere, into orbit, and then that final burn which sent us off into the solar system.

And I was like, fare thee well, man.

We got an adventure ahead of us.

It's just beginning.

[♪ AMBIENT SPACE MUSIC] [NARRATOR]: Just days after launch, OSIRIS-REx entered its one year orbit around the sun.

Six months into it, the spacecraft encountered space dust.

A meteoroid leaving a poppy seed sized dent in the heat shield.

The part of the craft responsible for protecting the sample return capsule during the punishing re-entry through Earth's atmosphere, scheduled for September 2023.

[DANTE]: Not a worry, no.

It's a big thick shield.

It'll probably char about that deep on a shield that's that big, yeah.

We just over engineered it, yeah.

I mean, you know you're gonna get hit by meteoroids in space, it's not like it's a surprise.

Every time you go out and you look at a shooting star, right, that's the same kind of dust that we're flying through right now.

So one of the science team members was excited.

He was like, "Oh, this is great."

We always get, it's like you always make lemonade out of your lemons, right?

It's like, oh, we got hit by a meteorite.

It's like, awesome.

And the engineers came back and said, don't worry about it.

And I trust them at this point.

They have never let me down.

[♪ PIANO MUSIC] [NARRATOR]: On its journey around the sun, the mission team activated all of the spacecraft's scientific instruments and fired its thrusters and main engine to position it so that one year after launch, it could use Earth's gravity to slingshot it toward a rendezvous with asteroid Bennu.

In September 2017, OSIRIS-REx passed within 11,000 miles of Antarctica as it flew around Earth.

Over the next few months, the spacecraft's camera suite, or OCAMS, took several high-resolution pictures of both Earth and the Moon.

[DANTE]: Yeah, the Earth Gravity Assist was a great exercise for the team.

So it was the first time everybody showed up here in Tucson because we were doing science operations here.

So we have team .. all over the world and all over the United States and this was the first time they descended on what we now call the Drake Building, the Michael J. Drake Building, in his honor.

And so, it just had that vibe, like all of a sudden everybody's here, we're excited, we're just getting ready for Bennu, and this is just a dry run, a rehearsal to check out all of our instruments.

And so, that's what we were really focused on.

[WOMAN]: Yeah, we haven't colored correctly yet.

[DANI]: No, this isn't actually that bad.

Land masses are brown.

And then here, and then the ocean is blue.

[DANTE]: And then that picture of the Earth showed up on the screen, and it was like a Carl Sagan moment.

It was like, you know, the famous pale blue dot.

And it's, you know, you just see it, it's like, that's us, right?

And that's everybody on Earth is in that one picture.

[♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC FADES UP AND ENDS] And you just realize how fragile it is, how beautiful it is, how rare it is, and really, you know, I wish everybody could have that moment, because I think we would take better care of ourselves and our home world.

Excited?

[BASHAR]: Oh, yeah, no, it was, I mean, .. we designed, we built, we launched a camera, went around the sun once, and then it took a picture of our home planet.

I mean, what more do you want?

Yeah, it's really cool.

Yeah.

And it's gonna do really good at Bennu, right?

I mean, I really feel like, you know, we've tested it at the really long exposure limit with all the stars.

We've tested it at the really short exposure limit, because it works at both limits with some effort, but works at both limits.

Right in the middle is a sweet spot.

This is where Bennu is, right?

- That's cool.

- Yeah.

[♪ AMBIENT SPACE MUSIC] [♪ AMBIENT SPACE MUSIC FADES] [♪ SLOW GUITAR MUSIC] [NARRATOR]: OSIRIS-REx would spend the next 15 months traveling 1.2 billion miles to reach Bennu.

It got its first glimpse of the asteroid in August 2018, sending back a grainy image taken at a distance of about 1.4 million miles.

In December, 16 years after kneeling over a meteorite in Antarctica, and 14 years after the fateful call from Michael Drake, OSIRIS-REx had arrived at asteroid Bennu.

Preparations began for the most crucial part of the mission.

Mapping the surface, choosing a sample site, descending to the surface, collecting a sample, then returning it safely to Earth.

[DANTE]: We're going to an asteroid that dates from the formation of our solar system.

Literally the oldest rocks in our planetary system, older than the Earth, and represents the building blocks of our planets.

And we're really going after the biggest questions we ask ourselves as a species, precisely where did we come from and are we alone in the universe?

We want to understand why earth is such a special place, why it has this wonderful hydrologic system that enabled the origin of life.

And we also want to know where are we going?

What is our future?

And we look to the stars and we look to destinations that we can explore.

And these asteroids are very accessible and they potentially hold a lot of resources.

And they also represent a significant natural disaster and we would like to be able to prevent that.

We're the first species on earth that could actually stop an asteroid from hitting.

And I think it's worth some of our effort to mitigate that risk.

[BIRDS CHIRPING] [CARL]: And just to kind of show you, this is the orbit of OSIRIS-REx.

[DANTE]: When we were designing the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, we performed an extensive astronomical campaign to characterize the target.

And when we got to Bennu, we actually saw we did a pretty good job.

We really did see this interesting spinning top shape that looks like, you know, it's bulging at the equator.

But what we didn't get right, and it was a big oops, was it was rough and rugged and rocky.

And at first glance, there was nowhere that looked like we could collect a sample from.

And so I knew right away we were in for a challenge, that we were going to have to roll up our sleeves.

And we had some work to do in order to figure out how we're going to get a sample off the surface of this asteroid.

So we very quickly build up a three-dimensional topographic map of the entire asteroid surface.

And we found some flat areas.

And so we decided we were going to design a trajectory.

The spacecraft is going to fly over a known area of the asteroid surface.

And then it gets to the point where it's going to start going down to the surface.

We call it the checkpoint.

And then it's going to have to match the speed that the asteroid is rotating, and we call that the match point.

So the spacecraft has to calculate its own maneuvers and get it into the target area.

We call the Nightingale crater as our sample site.

And then even then, there's still some things inside that crater that look hazardous.

We don't want to land on the big rocks.

And then there's the final unknown about what's going to happen when the spacecraft makes contact with the asteroid surface.

And to me, the scariest moment is going to be during that contact.

The spacecraft could tip over.

And if we lose signal, everybody's going to be holding their breath.

[JUDY]: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff on the "News Hour" tonight at war with an invisible enemy.

The U.S. hunkers down to fight the spread of COVID-19, closing the border to Canada as lawmakers move to provide financial relief while the economic fallout worsens.

[♪ AMBIENT DRONE MUSIC] [DANTE]: Definitely everybody is concerned about the health and safety of our team members and our public and the scientific community.

And the coronavirus is a unique challenge that we've never had to face before on this program or even really for a long time as a nation.

[DANTE]: The original plan was sampling in August of 2020.

We were five months away.

We pushed to October because of COVID, because the team was breaking down.

The stress and the intensity of the schedule, people just, Heather, the deputy PI, she pulled me aside and she says, "We can't keep going at this pace."

She says, "Somebody's going to break down.

We need to find some way to give this team some relief."

And that's when I saw the stress was really just starting to pile on them.

It's like, yeah, we're doing something really hard.

This is the hardest part of the mission, right, is going in to get the sample and we're doing it in the middle of this global pandemic.

So we just needed to recognize, again, take care of your family.

Family comes first.

Do what you need to do to take care of the family.

We've got your back.

We'll figure it out.

And so we're going to delay a couple months and I was still optimistic.

Part of me was like, well, you know, if we sample during the pandemic, we don't get to have the big party that we've been planning for the sample collection.

I said, maybe by October it'll be passed and we can have the big bash after all.

So part of me was like, yeah, let's go ahead and take an extra couple of months and then we can have the celebration.

Of course, that's not how it happened.

In October 2020, it was worse.

[HOST]: Dante, tell us what this important milestone checkpoint means.

[DANTE]: This is a really important part of the mission right now.

I ended up driving to Denver for that final event.

Like, I have to be there.

And NASA went big.

They wanted to do the media broadcast.

So we had to all be masked up.

If you look at the footage from TAG, we're all wearing masks.

We're all six feet away from each other We did two rehearsals and a sample collection in the span of, you know, seven months in 2020.

[SARA]: So I'm really excited.

This is a long time coming.

I thought I would feel more nervous, but I'm actually feeling great.

Just feeling really stoked for today and what we're about to do.

[ANJANI]: I am very excited about finally reaching this milestone in the project.

Sure, I have some nerves.

Maybe I haven't been sleeping as well as I could be, but I am just overwhelmingly confident in this team.

But we've also never actually touched the surface of an asteroid.

That's something new and you just never know what's going to happen.

[DANI]: I mean, we've done everything we can do to this point and we just have to see how it unfolds.

It's the team that makes this happen.

Not any one individual.

And I think that's probably been one of the best lessons I've learned from this project.

[CARL]: So last night was probably the first night in many months where I actually started having kind of stress dreams.

It's an important day.

It's, you know, we've been leading up to this since 2004 and there's a lot on the line today.

[DANTE]: Earlier we departed our orbit around the asteroid so we're flying over the sunlit side of the asteroid.

The spacecraft has deployed its robotic tag-sam sampling arm.

So the arm is ready in position to collect that sample.

Once we fire the thrusters for the checkpoint maneuver, we're actually going to start descending down towards the asteroid surface.

So this means we're going to be on our way to make contact.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: O-REx MSA on O-REx off.

Checkpoint burn has completed.

[CLAPPING AND EXCITEMENT] [DANTE]: Okay, we're heading down towards the asteroid surface at this point.

So we've got one more firing of thrusters with the spacecraft to get us lined up for the sample acquisition event.

We call that the match point.

Once it gets past match point, it's going to be telling us how likely am I to contact a hazard.

And we want that to be zero, but it may not be.

Especially early on, it could be like, there's a 30% chance I'm going to contact a hazard.

So you're kind of trending this hazard calculation all the way down to five meters before the surface.

It's that final decision on the spacecraft where we know we've committed and this is it.

And we're going in to hit the surface and hopefully get that sample.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: MSA on O-REx off.

O-REx is descending below 25 meters.

[DANTE]: Okay, we're getting really close.

And I want to remind you it's the five meter crossing that's the really critical one.

We're only a couple minutes away from that.

So the spacecraft has one key decision left to make.

It's calculating right now the probability that it's going to come down either on a hazardous area as we defined on that hazard map or in a safe area.

All my senses are on that call out right now.

I really want to hear that we are go for tag.

So that's just a couple minutes away here.

You can see here that this is a pretty daunting terrain that we're coming down here.

There's giant boulders all around the Nightingale site, even some large rocks inside the crater that we do not think the spacecraft would survive, at least with the ability to return back to Earth if it made contact.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: Attitude control system has transitioned to touch and go mode.

[DANTE]: Right, spacecraft's getting ready to make contact with the asteroid surface here.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: O-REx has processed its next message.

Position uncertainty is 0.5 meters.

[CLAPPING AND CHEERING] Predicted tag lateral offset is 1.7 meters.

Hazard probability is 0%.

[SLOW DRONE MUSIC] [WOMAN]: And we have touched down!

[CLAPPING AND CHEERING] [DANTE]: One of the most heartbreaking moments for me is watching the team celebrate the collection because we can't touch each other.

Right?

We have to stay six feet away so it's all like virtual high fives, virtual hugs.

We wanted to celebrate that and we couldn't get close.

[CLAPPING] [VOICE ON RADIO]: O-REx MSA on O-REx op.

Sample collection is complete and the back away burn has executed.

[WOMAN]: Backing away from the asteroid.

[DANTE]: Alright.

We're on our way back.

[CLAPPING AND CHEERING] [DANTE]: A little overwhelmed right now, Michelle, I have to say.

It's been pretty intense several minutes here.

I can tell you that everything went just exactly perfect, which is kind of the hallmark of this team.

We have consistently beaten expectations over and over again.

We have overcome the amazing challenges that this asteroid has thrown at us and the spacecraft appears to have operated flawlessly.

So Bennu has surprised us every step of the way.

That's why it's the trickster asteroid.

And sure enough, when we sent the spacecraft down to make contact with the surface, you know, we were expecting, we were collecting on rocks, right?

It should be like touching a gravel field.

The surface of Bennu is like quicksand.

And so when we hit the surface of the asteroid, we just kept going.

And we thought we would sink in about this much.

We went down into the asteroid this deep, right?

Which was great for collecting a sample because all kinds of stuff was getting jammed up inside that sample collector.

In fact, we collected so much material, it was leaking, right?

By the time we got to look at it two days later, particles were just spewing out into space.

So, one last emergency, contingency on the spacecraft team.

And it was kind of cool to see because the team at that point, been through a pandemic, been through all the challenges that Bennu had thrown at us, they were ready.

They're like, "Oh yeah, we got it, right?

One more emergency, no worries.

We'll figure it out."

And we quickly got that sample stowed.

It tucked away into that capsule and closed up and ready for its journey home.

[♪ SLOW GUITAR MUSIC] [♪ SLOW GUITAR MUSIC FADES] [NARRATOR]: Six months after the sample capture, OSIRIS-REx fired its main engines at full throttle for seven minutes, which thrust the spacecraft away from Bennu at 600 miles per hour, and set it on a two and a half year journey back to Earth.

Years before the sample return capsule would pierce Earth's atmosphere in the desert skies above Utah, scientists and engineers had been preparing for the crucial and ongoing process of analyzing Bennu's material once safely returned.

Protecting it from earthly contamination is the priority.

The regolith will be kept in a sealed chamber filled with nitrogen gas inside a sterile clean room at NASA's new OSIRIS-REx Sample Curation Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Specially trained curators wearing gowns and masks can only manipulate it by reaching into the chamber through gloves mounted on the side.

[NICOLE]: We'll be curating the sample in here for decades to come as new questions arise and new scientists request the sample, people who may now be in elementary school requesting it in a couple years for their graduate projects and things like that.

We do expect this to be an active lab for quite a long time.

[NARRATOR]: Twenty-five percent of the material from Bennu will be turned over to a University of Arizona-led science team for two years of detailed study by more than 200 researchers at labs in Tucson and around the world.

[BEEPING] But first, OSIRIS-REx must safely deliver part of asteroid Bennu to Earth.

[NASA HOST]: Welcome and thank you for joining us live from the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah This is special coverage of America's first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, as it arrives back to Earth after more than seven years traveling in deep space.

In less than an hour, a four and a half billion year old piece of the ancient solar system will be landing here in the desert.

For now, let's give you a quick geography lesson on where we are today.

We are sitting about 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City in the heart of the Dugway Proving Ground, a historic Army facility.

The sample will touch down in our landing ellipse about 13 miles north of where we're speaking right now.

Mission teams have set up a clean room just one mile away from us where the sample will end its journey today.

We've got a lot to discuss and a huge adventure straight ahead.

[ VOICE CONTINUES FAR AWAY ] [DANTE]: The day actually starts really early in the morning, and there's a critical decision at 2am, go/no-go.

Are we releasing the capsule, or are we in a situation where we have to hang on to it and delay the sample return by two years?

I've already voted go.

So that's on record, PIs go, right?

But I don't get the safety vote.

And then there's a whole series of commands and operations that happen to the spacecraft, ultimately releasing the capsule, where it hits the top of the atmosphere about four hours later.

[ SOUND OF LAYERED CONVERSATIONS ] [NASA HOST]: Just a little bit further north from us, about four hours ago in Waterton, Colorado, the team met to assess the readiness to release the SRC from the main OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

And I'm very happy to report, that they gave the green light, they gave the go command officially.

[CLAPPING] And in just a few moments, the SRC itself will be streaking across the skies, as we begin to track it.

[ ♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC ] [DANTE]: That's when the field team activates.

We arrive here at the Michael Army airfield, and we get into our helicopters, and we fly off to just outside what we call the landing ellipse.

And then we wait until we get confirmation that we can see the parachute opening up.

This is where the final endgame of OSIRIS-REx plays out.

[NASA HOST]: So this is it.

We are just 15 minutes away from the OSIRIS-REx sample return, a journey of seven years, and nearly four billion miles.

The work of thousands culminates in this moment.

[HELICOPTERS WHIRRING] [NASA HOST]: You see on your screen now the Mission Ops team eager at the edge of their seats for that first call out of Earth atmospheric entry.

Very exciting moment coming up in just a few seconds here.

[VOICE ON RADIO] : [INAUDIBLE]...milestone.

The SRC has entered the Earth's atmosphere.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: [INAUDIBLE] [NASA HOST]: Start your stopwatch right now.

We have that expected milestone of entering into the Earth's atmosphere.

Phenomenal view, of that streaking SRC coming in across the sky.

[DANTE]: At the end of the day, we know we've done the best job we can, but the thing I worry about the most is we have to power up the sample return capsule, and there's a battery system on there which we haven't talked to, which releases the parachutes.

So if we try to power up the batteries and they're dead, we're throwing a dead capsule at the Earth.

[NASA HOST]: Our next milestone will be expecting that, drogue parachute deployment.

Quite a challenge to track this as it comes searing into Earth's atmosphere.

[MAN 1]: I can tell you what we expected to happen.

The drogue chute is commanded to deploy, and then 360 seconds after the drogue, the main chute.

[MAN 2]: I could not see, whether or not the drogue was deployed in the imagery that I had available in real time in the Ops room.

[NASA HOST]: It's the SRC, streaking in.

We see.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: PDL milestone.

We have confirmed parachute deployment.

[NASA BROADCASTER]: Wow, and after an exhilarating... ...streak across Earth's atmosphere, we have parachute deployment.

You can see...just a sigh of relief from the team.

I can hear some applause here.

Here is that orange creamsicle-colored parachute just a delight, a sweet delight to see, in our sky here over the Utah testing training range.

[ ♪ UPLIFTING MUSIC ] A phenomenal view, just wonderful to see them.

[ ♪ UPLIFTING MUSIC ] [DANTE] I knew the moment the chute opened that was it.

It was overwhelming relief, gratitude, pride, awe, and really trying to convince myself that I wasn't dreaming.

[NASA HOST]: And touchdown of the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return capsule.

A journey of a billion miles to asteroid Bennu and back, has come to an end.

[APPLAUSE] And you can see now the SRC.

At last, we have a visual of it, on the surface of the Utah Test and Training Range.

And there is landing of our first helicopter at the site.

And the rest of the team is closely behind, ready to land at the recovery site to begin operations.

[DANTE]: (excitedly) Yeah!

[CELEBRATORY UTTERANCES] Looks good, huh?

[MAN]: Heat shield down.

[DANTE]: Yeah.

[MAN]: Heat shield d.. [DANTE]: Parachute right next to it.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the first people to lay eyes on the capsule.

And boy, did we stick that landing.

It was just sitting right there.

Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

We think we've got a lot of sample in that science canister, and we can't wait to crack into it.

[VOICE ON RADIO]: Recovery operations.

Helicopter-1 is cleared to depart, the recover site with the SRC.

[NASA HOST]: And it is off the desert terrain, in the air with the SRC in tow.

[HELICOPTER WHIRRING] [DANTE]: O-REx on three.

One, two, three.

(ALL TOGETHER) O-REx.

[NASA HOST]: This is the final leg of the journey of the SRC.

It has been loaded on the helicopter a few minutes ago.

And as we speak, team members are staged and waiting just outside that clean room, ready to get that SRC back on the ground once more.

[HELICOPTER WHIRRING] [DANTE]: The key objective for me, and one of the driving objectives of this program, is to try to understand: "did carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu, deliver the compounds that may have led to the origin of life on our planet?

The origin of Earth as a habitable world?"

I was there when it was nothing but, a PowerPoint on a slide, in a proposal that we were submitting to NASA with this dream that we were going to bring back samples from Bennu.

So, it was amazing and emotional.

As incredible as it seemed all those years ago, it came to be.

[APPLAUSE] With the sample safely on Earth, many from the OSIRIS-REx team transition to a new University of Arizona-led NASA asteroid mission.

Others joined the staff of the new Arizona Astrobiology Center, to conduct cutting-edge astrobiological research, to unlock the mysteries of life in the universe.

Led by Dante Lauretta.

[DANTE]: For me, I've really gotten back to my roots, the origin of life, right?

That's what got me into this program from the very beginning.

From that moment, Danny and I were looking at that watery, soaked meteorite in Antarctica in 2002, to when we said, "we need to go get a piece of this and bring it back, right?"

That promise is just about to be made good.

And Danny's on the team.

He's my organics analysis lead.

We've been friends for over 20 years now.

And I gave them a bunch of different analytical protocols to develop.

I said, this is what I want you to go.. Amino acids that are used in proteins, nucleic acids that are used in our genetic material, fatty acids that are used in our cell membranes, you name it, sugars, all kinds of compounds.

We're going to go and we're going to say, "OK, this was the inventory that was available at the dawn of life on Earth."

And I can't wait to see what that list looks like.

[ ♪ PASSIONATE STRINGS MUSIC ]