A NASA spacecraft descended to an asteroid Tuesday and, dodging boulders the size of buildings, momentarily touched the surface to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for return to Earth. It was a first for the United States — only Japan has scored asteroid samples. Confirmation came from the Osiris-Rex spacecraft as it made contact with the surface of the asteroid Bennu more than 320 million kilometres away. Bennu's gravity was too low for the spacecraft to land — the asteroid is just 510 metres across. Japan expects samples from its second asteroid mission — in the milligrams at most — to land in the Australian desert in December.

Source: CBC News October 21, 2020 00:11 UTC