NASA can’t open its OSIRIS-REx asteroid capsule yet, but the outside alone holds more than enough samples

Sept. 24 was a big day for NASA, when an orange-and-white capsule containing pieces of an asteroid landed on Earth, charred from its ultrahigh-speed fall through our atmosphere. The asteroid in question, named Bennu, is thought to have been roaming space since the early days of our solar system — meaning these samples could reveal to us what our cosmic neighborhood looked like way before we got here.