Precious Dust Two Mission Converge on Asteroid Sample Returns

Abstract: Far-flung spacecraft deliver incredible views of distant worlds. But there’s nothing like bringing samples back to Earth. Instruments carried by spacecraft have limitations-of power, complexity, size, and number. Their investigations leave many fundamental questions unanswered, questions that we might be able to answer if only we had samples. This summer marks the beginning of an exciting new era in sample-return missions: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrives at asteroid Bennu, and the Japane…