Yes, as we all know “how much it weighs” is the most important consideration of something’s value.

OSIRIS-REx mission lands on an asteroid, and then returns to earth with its sample…and people are bitching because they didn’t bring back more than they could use anyway? Holy shit, talk about missing the entire point.

But, as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And small though the sample may be, it is 20 times greater than the amount of asteroid material previously returned to Earth by a pair of Japanese sample return missions. A little will go a long way as scientists study the organics and other materials in this asteroid dust to divine clues to the origin of life and conditions that existed at the dawn of our Solar System. You don’t need handfuls of material to get a meaningful result from an electron microscope.

Moreover, the sample retrieval was double the minimum requirement for the mission, 60 grams. So, OSIRIS-REx can now definitively be labeled as an unqualified success.

NASA reveals its booty

Payload on the moon

Uranus

Space scientists are horny little buttfuckers

Still cheaper than inkjets

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