NASA's OSIRIS-REx Is About to Touch an Asteroid

For nearly two years, a small spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx has been orbiting an asteroid more than 100 million miles away, patiently biding its time by studying the rock's surface. Scientists believe that this asteroid, Bennu, is a piece of a much larger one that formed just a few million years after Earth. It's a perfectly preserved cosmic time capsule that could reveal the secrets of the ancient history of our solar system. Tomorrow, OSIRIS-REx will make a daring plunge to Bennu's surface and use a robotic arm to vacuum up some of its space dust, which it'll bring back to Earth. The encounter will last for just a few seconds, but it is a technological feat that has been more than a decade in the making.