After a nearly 4 billion-mile round trip, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft\u00a0successfully delivered NASA\u2019s first asteroid sample to Earth. <\/p>\n
The capsule containing rocks and soil, collected from the asteroid Bennu, stuck a perfect landing in the Utah desert on September 24 after blazing through Earth\u2019s atmosphere at blistering temperatures \u2014 enough to completely char the outside of the receptacle. <\/p>\n
Now, the rare contents are safely stowed at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where scientists will study them to help unlock the secrets of our solar system. <\/p>\n
Countless people who have worked on the mission for years celebrated the historic achievement, including Queen guitarist Brian May, who also happens to be an astrophysicist and proud\u00a0OSIRIS-REx teammate. <\/p>\n
But the spacecraft\u2019s epic journey isn\u2019t over yet. <\/p>\n
The newly renamed OSIRIS-APEX mission is setting a course for Apophis, an asteroid with a fear-inducing reputation. <\/p>\n
The space rock \u2014 named for the Egyptian god of chaos and darkness \u2014 was once considered to be one of the most potentially hazardous asteroid threats to Earth. <\/p>\n
Apophis isn\u2019t on a collision course with our planet anytime soon, the latest research has suggested. But\u00a0the asteroid will come so close to Earth\u00a0in 2029 that people will be able to see it with the naked eye. <\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when OSIRIS-APEX will make its move, going into orbit around Apophis and studying it for 18 months. The spacecraft is no longer capable of collecting a sample, but it will use thrusters to kick up dust and rocks to study Apophis\u2019 stony surface. <\/p>\n
Archaeologists were excavating a 2,300-year-old tomb in Israel when they came across what may be the remains of a hetaira, or a courtesan of ancient Greece. <\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s cremated remains were found inside a cave, along with\u00a0a well-preserved bronze folding mirror. <\/p>\n
She may have been one of the first Greeks to arrive in the region, accompanying a government official or high general during the Hellenistic Age, or between 323 BC and 30 BC. <\/p>\n
Several details about her burial, including the\u00a0<\/strong>rare pristine mirror, hint at the woman\u2019s origins, and researchers hope to uncover more of her story in the future. <\/p>\n Mysterious \u201cfairy circles,\u201d or dot patterns of barren dirt that appear in dryland grasses, have sparked\u00a0<\/strong>intrigue for decades since being spotted in Southern Africa\u2019s Namib Desert or the Western Australian outback. <\/p>\n A new atlas, pieced together by scientists in Spain using artificial intelligence, reveals that fairy circles may be present at\u00a0hundreds of places around the world. <\/p>\n The phenomenon\u00a0<\/strong>that shapes the circles remains a puzzle, but the global atlas will enable research that could illuminate why the polka-dot pattern appears. <\/p>\n Separately, scientists have predicted that the formation of a massive \u201csupercontinent\u201d could\u00a0make Earth virtually uninhabitable in 250 million years, wiping out humans and mammals unable to cope with excessive heat. <\/p>\n NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is finally back on Earth after spending\u00a0a record-breaking 371 days in space\u00a0\u2014 and his extended stay wasn\u2019t planned. <\/p>\n The Soyuz spacecraft that delivered Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin for a six-month stint began leaking coolant after space debris likely struck it. A replacement spacecraft docked at the International Space Station in late February, and a fresh crew finally arrived on September 15. <\/p>\n Rubio\u2019s calendar year aboard the orbiting outpost is the longest a US astronaut has spent in zero gravity, and now, he\u2019s readjusting to life on Earth. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not walking, we\u2019re not bearing our own weight (while in space),\u201d he said, \u201cand so it\u2019ll be anywhere from two to six months before I essentially say that I feel normal.\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, a new film explores the story of astronaut Jos\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez, the\u00a0first former migrant worker to venture to space\u00a0in 2009 after NASA rejected him 11 times. <\/p>\n A\u00a0newly described tarantula species looks like it would be right at home slinging webs alongside Spider-Man. <\/p>\n The electric blue tarantula, named Taksinus bambus, was found living in tree hollows in southern Thailand last year. <\/p>\n \u201cBlue is one of the rarest colors to appear in nature, which makes blue coloration in animals particularly fascinating,\u201d said Narin Chomphuphuang, a researcher at Thailand\u2019s Khon Kaen University who helped discover the spider. <\/p>\n Researchers believe that the unique structure of the tarantula\u2019s hair, rather than the presence of blue pigments, contributes to the creature\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cmesmerizing\u201d appearance. <\/p>\n Get lost in these riveting reads: <\/p>\n \u2014 The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine will be announced next week, awarding brilliant minds for their research \u2014 but the illustrious prizes draw criticism, too. <\/p>\n \u2014 Elusive pangolins are the world\u2019s most trafficked mammals, but the recent\u00a0discovery of an unknown species\u00a0could help in the fight against the scale-covered animal\u2019s extinction. <\/p>\n \u2014 Does gum really sit in your stomach for seven years? Here\u2019s what experts have to say about the old wives\u2019 tale and\u00a0what really happens when you swallow gum. <\/p>\n \u2014 The James Webb Space Telescope detected a\u00a0building block of life on the surface of Europa, an ice-covered ocean world orbiting Jupiter. <\/p>\n\n After a nearly 4 billion-mile round trip, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft\u00a0successfully delivered NASA\u2019s first asteroid sample to Earth. The capsule containing rocks and soil, collected from the asteroid Bennu, stuck a perfect landing in the Utah desert on September 24 after blazing through Earth\u2019s atmosphere at blistering temperatures \u2014 enough to completely char the outside of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Curiosities<\/h3>\n
Defying gravity<\/h3>\n
Wild kingdom<\/h3>\n
Explorations<\/h3>\n