The Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. Image: NASA
A massive tax and spending package passed by the Senate on Wednesday was approved by the House on Thursday and signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, July 4.
In the past fifteen years, five missions have returned samples of extraterrestrial material to Earth for analysis. These included missions that rendezvoused with Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), like the Hayabusa 1 and 2 and the OSIRIS-REx missions, and the Chang'e-5 and -6 missions, which brought back samples from the far side of the Moon. In the coming years, China plans to return samples from 469219 Kamoʻoalewa with its Tianwen-2 mission. With all the extraterrestrial materials being returned to Earth for analysis, one could argue that we are entering a "golden age of sample-return missions."
