Move over, moon rocks: Space Center Houston has a new type of space stone in its showcase.
The official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center on Friday (March 1) became only the second place in the world where the public can see a sample of the asteroid Bennu as collected and brought back to Earth by the space agency's OSIRIS-REx mission.
"Having a piece of an asteroid is is very rare," said Paul Spana, Space Center Houston's director of collections and curator, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "There were only two asteroid sample missions prior to this, which the Japanese did several years ago, and they were only able to return a very small amount."
"Other than that, there are no other samples on display in the world except at the Smithsonian and soon the University of Arizona. So in that case, it's rarer than the moon rocks," said Spana.
Related: OSIRIS-REx: A complete guide to NASA's asteroid-sampling mission
