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OSIRIS-REx Return to Earth Forever Stamp -2023

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          Description

          On May 10, 2021, OSIRIS-REx began its flight back toward Earth. Its container of asteroid dust
          and rocks, enclosed in a special capsule, is expected to parachute down to the Utah desert on
          Sept. 24, 2023.
          The OSIRIS-REx pane of 20 stamps will be issued as Forever stamps.

          After OSIRIS-REx arrived in the asteroid’s
          orbit, in December 2018, it got to work. With its
          special cameras and spectrometers, it began
          photographing and mapping Bennu’s surface to
          determine the best site from which to collect
          samples. Scientists were surprised to learn, from
          the photographs the spacecraft sent back, that
          the asteroid’s surface was much different from
          what they had expected. Instead of being
          relatively smooth, it was rocky and cratered, so
          finding a sample-collection site posed
          challenges. Eventually they chose a site about
          the size of a tennis court, located in a crater.
          The time for the rendezvous arrived in October
          2020. To carry out its task, the spacecraft did
          not actually land on the asteroid but instead
          slowly descended toward the surface and
          extended a robotic arm. A collection device at
          the hand-end of the arm then released a sudden
          puff of nitrogen gas that sent up a cloud of dust
          and rocks from Bennu’s surface. More than two
          ounces of these materials were captured in a
          special container in the collection device, which then closed and retracted into the spacecraft.
          Even though this seems like a miniscule amount considering the effort involved, it’s the largest
          sample ever collected from an asteroid, and the first asteroid sample by the United States.