NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft makes history by successfully touching down on asteroid

An illustration of OSIRIS-REx approaching Bennu.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made history on Tuesday when it briefly touched down on the asteroid Bennu, more than 200 million miles away from Earth.

This was the first mission of its kind for NASA, and was more than a decade in the making. After years of planning, OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016, and it has spent the last two years orbiting Bennu, an asteroid that is as tall as the Empire State Building, CNN reports. The spacecraft has been sending back data and images, but its main reason for going to the asteroid was so it could quickly touch down and use its robotic arm to collect a sample.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.