The space agency worked for months to develop tools capable of opening stubborn fasteners that had trapped material collected from the near-Earth asteroid...
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Two stubborn fasteners trapped invaluable material sampled from an asteroid — but after a monthslong process, it has finally been released, NASA announced Thursday. The space agency already harvested about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust from its OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled nearly 4 billion miles to collect the unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. But NASA revealed in October that some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism — a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu. The sampler head is held shut by 35 fasteners, according to NASA, but two of them proved too difficult to open. Prying the mechanism loose is no simple task. The space agency must use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the…