Historic NASA asteroid mission set for perilous return

Lucie AUBOURG NASA's first mission to retrieve an asteroid sample and return it to US soil is expected to reach a perilous finale on Sunday with a descent into the Utah desert.

Scientists hope the material, possibly the most ever retrieved by such a mission, will provide humanity with a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.

The US space probe OSIRIS-REx, launched in 2016, scooped up the sample from an asteroid called Bennu, almost three years ago.
Touchdown is scheduled for Sunday at around 9:00 a.m. local time (1500 GMT), at a military testing site in the western state.

Some four hours earlier, at about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) away from Earth, the Osiris-Rex probe will release the capsule containing the sample.

The final descent lasts 13 minutes: the capsule enters the atmosphere at a speed of around 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) per hour and reaches a maximum temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius), NASA said.