OSIRIS-REx Return to Earth Forever Stamp -2023

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.