Recovery specialists opened the lid of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample canister and discovered some extra bits of the asteroid on the avionics deck.

OSIRIS-REx's return from Bennu comes with a twist, as scientists face delays in disassembling the canister due to an abundance of material on the exterior.

NASA has revealed the materials harvested from the asteroid Bennu after finally being able to remove the stuck lid from the OSIRIS-REx return capsule.

Science Space NASA Opens Osiris-Rex Asteroid Sample Canister, Revealing Cosmic Bounty Small bits grabbed from a space rock in 2020 touched down in the Utah desert on Sunday.

NASA lifted the lid of its OSIRIS-REx sample container, collected from millions of miles away on asteroid Bennu. The space agency photographed the contents inside.

On Oct. 20, 2020, engineers at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado flew NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft down to the surface of asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the surface material.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivered a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu to Earth Sunday, dropping the sample capsule in the Utah desert.

Workers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston remove the lid of the OSIRIS-REx sample return canister inside a glove box to prevent contamination in September 2023.

“We are overjoyed with the success,” NASA’s chief OSIRIS-REx sample curator, Nicole Lunning, said.

Scientists removed the outer lid of OSIRIS-REx's sample canister on Tuesday (Sept. 26). But a full reveal of the mission's asteroid sample is still two weeks away.

After its successful OSIRIS-REx mission to set an unmanned craft down on and retrieve a sample from the Bennu asteroid, two stubborn screws kept NASA’s scientists out of the canister.

What you need to know about NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission as it prepares to return asteroid samples to Earth on Sunday.