After months of prying and jimmying, NASA scientists have at last opened the canister containing material scraped from the "potentially hazardous" asteroid Bennu, the agency announced on Thursday (Jan. 11).
The sample — roughly 8.8 ounces (250 grams) of rocky space rubble collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — is thought to contain some of the earliest precursors to life and is the first chunk of a space rock ever grabbed by a NASA mission.
