A sample of material collected from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has been found to contain abundant water and carbon, the US space agency NASA said, offering more evidence for a theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. The findings were announced on Wednesday as NASA gave the public a first glimpse of what scientists found inside a sealed capsule that was returned to Earth last month after carrying material scooped from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid's surface by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. "This is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever returned to Earth," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at a press event at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the first images of black dust and pebbles were revealed. Carbon accounted for almost 5 percent of the sample's total weight, and was present in both organic and mineral form, while the water was locked inside the crystal structure of clay minerals, Nelson said. The findings were made through a preliminary analysis involving scanning the sample with electron microscopy, X-ray computed tomography and more.

Planet Earth is about to receive a special delivery -- the biggest sample yet from an asteroid. A United States space agency (NASA) spacecraft will fly by Earth on Sunday and drop off what is expected to be at least a cupful of rubble it grabbed from the asteroid Bennu, closing out a seven-year quest. The sample capsule will parachute into the Utah desert as its mothership, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, zooms off for an encounter with another asteroid. Scientists anticipate getting about 250g (0.5lb) of pebbles and dust, much more than the teaspoon or so brought back by Japan from two other asteroids. No other country has fetched pieces of asteroids, preserved time capsules from the dawn of our solar system that can help explain how Earth -- and life -- came to be.

U.S. Space Force officials swear in first recruits for the defense branch on'Fox & amp; Friends.' CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week's grab that it's jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said Friday. Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu, NASA's first attempt at such a mission. The mission's lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said Tuesday's operation 200 million miles away collected far more material than expected for return to Earth -- in the hundreds of grams. The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid. In this image taken from video released by NASA, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft touches the surface of asteroid Bennu on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020.

Cape Canaveral, Florida – A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week's grab that it's jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said Friday. Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu, NASA's first attempt at such a mission. The mission's lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said Tuesday's operation 200 million miles away collected far more material than expected for return to Earth – in the hundreds of grams. The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid. Scientists estimate the sampler pressed as much as 19 inches (48 centimeters) into the rough, crumbly, black terrain.

A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week's grab that it's jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said Friday. Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu 200 million miles away. The mission's lead scientist, Dante Lauretta, said Tuesday's operation collected far more material than expected for return to Earth -- in the hundreds of grams. The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid. The team was scrambling to put the sample container into the return capsule as early as Tuesday -- much sooner than originally planned -- for the long trip home.

Working like a reverse vacuum cleaner, the sampler head of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft appeared to operate flawlessly collecting material from the surface of asteroid Bennu. In one of the most ambitious games of tag in human history, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully reached out and touched Bennu, a tiny, top-shaped asteroid that's been spinning through the solar system for a billion years. If all went according to plan, the spacecraft scooped up a bit of material during its brief moment of contact and departed seconds later with precious cargo: rocks and dust dating back to the solar system's birth. Confirmation of a successful sample will take days, but even now, the team knows that the spacecraft touched down on Bennu's surface within 2.5 feet of its target. "We're safely moving away from the asteroid's surface," said University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx, after the team confirmed the spacecraft's sample collection mechanism activated.

A company is helping combat the coronavirus with the power of artificial intelligence. The tech company now is using it to figure out who to fit the maximum number of beds in a hospital while following social distancing guidelines. The solution won a COVID-19 Crisis Challenge launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Galvin Widjaja, the founder of the company, it is as simple as taking a picture of a hospital room and running it through the company's software. "In a lot of hospitals that are kind of private hospitals that have been converted, they are built for luxury, not optimization. And so what you would have is you would have five beds in the space of between nine and 14 different people which means you could actually just run this on the lower density hospitals and you could increase the number of beds by two or three times," Widjaja said.

NASA has captured an incredible close-up shot of plumes of dust and rocks erupting from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu as it spins through the solar system. Researchers from the University of Arizona have been studying the images taken by the navigation camera on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The high-resolution images were taken as part of a NASA mission to bring samples of the asteroid - that is about 300,000miles away - back to Earth for scientists to study. These images offer a detailed look at small-scale rock and particle loss from an active asteroid for the first time, say researchers. Previous studies have been limited to only the largest ejections seen from Earth. More than 20,000 known near-Earth asteroids are travelling around the solar system at any given time according to NASA.

WASHINGTON – NASA's first look at a tiny asteroid shows the space rock is more moist and studded with boulders than originally thought. Scientists on Monday released the first morsels of data collected since their spacecraft Osiris-Rex hooked up last week with the asteroid Bennu, which is only about three blocks wide and weighs about 80 million tons (73 million metric tons). Bennu regularly crosses Earth's orbit and will come perilously close in about 150 years. Project scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona said the blueish space rock is "a little more rugged of an environment than we expected" with hundreds of 33-foot (10-meter) boulders, instead of just one or two. There's also a bigger 16-foot (50-meter) boulder on Bennu, which looks like two cones put together with a bulge on its waistline.

Later today Nasa hopes to launch a spacecraft on its journey towards an asteroid, where it will collect and return samples that experts believe may hold the building blocks of life. Nasa's OSRIS-REx spacecraft will travel for two years to reach Bennu, and plans to return to Earth in 2023. Fitted with sensors, the craft will map out the surface of the asteroid in order to address basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system. Final preparations: Forecasters said good weather was expected for the 7:05 PM EDT launch. But Nasa has until mid-October to send the SUV-size spacecraft on its way.