NASA Explorers

It’s not rockets and satellites that make NASA soar. It’s people. Go inside the space agency and follow the pioneers, risk-takers and experts at the frontline of exploration. This season, follow along with the OSIRIS-REx team, as they launch a spacecraft to an asteroid, collect a sample of Bennu, and bring it home to Earth.

When it comes to space exploration, expect the unexpected. As OSIRIS-REx approached asteroid Bennu, scientists were surprised to find a loosely packed rubble pile. This episode, NASA Explorers get a closer look at Bennu and the surprises in store.

It was Touch-and-Go there for a few seconds…literally! OSIRIS-REx had only 6 seconds to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu – in a maneuver called TAG – while the NASA Explorers behind the mission waited anxiously 200 million miles away.

The lifetime of space missions can be measured in decades, not years. From designing, building, launching, sampling and finally returning home, follow the NASA Explorers of OSIRIS-REx as they enter the final stretch of their quest to sample asteroid Bennu.

How does it feel to watch your life’s work parachute through the atmosphere? Relive the joy and terror of the OSIRIS-REx sample return with NASA Explorers… but retrieving the sample of asteroid Bennu is just the beginning of this game-changing science.