Free Republic

After orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Bennu for nearly two years, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully touched down and reached out its robotic arm to collect a sample from the asteroid's surface on Tuesday. That sample will be returned to Earth in 2023. To achieve this historic first for NASA, a van-size spacecraft had to briefly touch down its arm in a landing site called Nightingale. The site is the width of a few parking spaces. The arm reached out to collect a sample, which could be between 2 ounces and 2 kilograms. Then, the spacecraft backed away to safety.

Earth is set for another spooky encounter with a 700 metre asteroid that looks uncannily like a skull. The space rock first passed ‘close’ to our planet at 78,000mph (125,500km/h) at a distance of 310,000 miles (499,000km) on October 31, 2015, just in time for Halloween. Now, it’s set to make a return in November 2018. This fall, the space rock, known as 2015 TB145, will flyby at a less dramatic distance than the last one. The asteroid will zoom past the planet at about 105 Earth-moon distances, compared to just under 1.3 lunar distances last time around. Astronomers analysing...