Watch live: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to drop asteroid sample to Earth

Here is how you can watch a live stream of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission dropping a capsule with an asteroid sample to Earth.

Artistic depiction of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropping a capsule containing an asteroid sample to Earth. (Image credit: NASA/Screenshot)

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In a first-of-a-kind space mission, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is set to drop a capsule containing samples of the asteroid Bennu to a location in a desert in Utah at 8.25 PM IST on Sunday, September 24. Here is everything you need to know about the mission and how you can watch it live.

The capsule contains about 250 grams of material that was gathered from the asteroid Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft two years ago. You can watch a live stream of the sample capsule being dropped to Earth and being retrieved below.

The mission has flown for seven years since it launched and is about to face a very difficult challenge—actually delivering the sample to a precise location on Earth. The spacecraft itself will not land on Earth, but it will “drop” the parcel in an exact manner so that it lands at the decided location in the Utah desert.

If the capsule’s trajectory is angled too high during the drop, it will skip off the planet’s atmosphere like a rock skipping off a river when thrown just right. On the flip side, if it is angled too low, the capsule will burn up in the atmosphere along with its precious cargo.

This is why OSIRIS-REx team members from NASA and private firms like KinetX and Lockheed Martin have extensively tested navigation plans using computer simulations. These models take into account various weather, solar activity and space debris scenarios to ensure that the capsule is put on the right route to its landing location.