Air and Space

An American astronaut?s record-breaking spaceflight came to an end when he and his crew landed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, September 27, NASA said. (Credit: NASA via Storyful)

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin have returned to earth with a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. During his mission, Rubio broke the record for longest single spaceflight for a U.S. astronaut spending 371 consecutive days living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory. The mission all part of NASA?s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA?s Artemis program.

NASA has collected its first-ever asteroid samples from deep space. Daniel Brown at Nottingham Trent University joined LiveNOW from FOX's Josh Breslow to discuss the significance of the mission.

Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but won?t know for sure until the container is opened.

Planet Earth is about to receive a special delivery — the biggest sample yet from an asteroid. A NASA spacecraft will fly by Earth on Sunday and drop off what is expected to be at least a cupful of rubble it grabbed from the asteroid Bennu, closing out a seven-year quest. The sample capsule will parachute into the Utah desert as its mothership, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft, zooms off for an encounter with another asteroid. Scientists anticipate getting about a half pound (250 grams) of pebbles and dust, much more than the teaspoon or so brought back by Japan from two other asteroids. No other country has fetched pieces of asteroids, preserved time capsules from the dawn of our solar system that can help explain how Earth — and life — came to be. Sunday’s landing concludes a 4 billion-mile (6.2-billion-kilometer) journey highlighted by the rendezvous with the carbon-rich Bennu, a unique pogo stick-style touchdown and sample grab, a jammed lid that sent some of the stash spilling into space, and now the return of NASA’s first asteroid samples. “I ask myself how many heart-pounding moments can you have in one lifetime because I feel like I might be hitting my limit,” said the University of Arizona’s Dante Lauretta, the mission’s lead scientist.

Video provided by NASA shows the rehearsal of the helicopter transport of the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule to a clean room area in Utah. The spacecraft is set to drop off a sample from asteroid Bennu on Sept. 24.