Imagine spending seven years and over a billion dollars to build a cosmic vault, then watching your sample leak into space because you grabbed too much. That was the crisis facing NASA's OSIRIS-REx team in October 2020. This episode walks through the full mission, from the choice of the carbon-rich near-Earth asteroid Bennu to the sample findings published in January 2025.

We explain why Bennu matters for planetary defense, including its small but statistically significant chance of impacting Earth between 2169 and 2199 and the Yarkovsky effect that requires close-up thermal measurements. We describe the record one-kilometer orbit with a 62-hour period, the student-built REXIS instrument that accidentally caught a black hole X-ray burst, and the hydrazine contamination worries that forced a passive descent. Then we cover the touch-and-go ni ...