(ANSA) - WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 21 - Four years after its launch, the American probe Osiris-Rex managed last night to touch the asteroid Bennu in an attempt to collect some tens of grams of dust: a high-precision operation at 330 million kilometers from the earth.
"Everything went perfectly", announced a few minutes after the contact Dante Lauretta, the head of the mission: "A page of history has been written tonight", commented.
With Osiris-Rex, NASA aims to collect at least 60 grams of fragments that it hopes will reveal the original 'ingredients' of the solar system.