Asteroid Bennu: Scientists open cannister after it was stuck closed for four months

This is what the outside of the Osiris-Rex sample collector looks like

If you thought trying to open a stiff jar of jam was tough, you've heard nothing yet...

Scientists anxiously waiting to study dust samples collected from an asteroid over 200 million miles away, have spent months trying to open the cannisters it was collected in.

A spacecraft carrying samples from an asteroid called Bennu returned to Earth in September 2023 but two of the 35 cannisters were well and truly stuck.

But finally after four months of trying, they're in and have access to the final samples of the space rock.

The Osiris-Rex spacecraft left Earth back in 2016 and collected the sample in 2020 from an asteroid called Bennu, in a daring mission, 205 million miles away from Earth.

Once it had returned to Earth, and most of the cannisters were opened, samples of the dust were sent to laboratories around the world, including in the UK, to be studied by scientists.

However two of the sample canisters just would not budge, and Nasa experts couldn't just smash them as they didn't want to contaminate the precious contents - so they had to use specially-designed tools to pry the samples open.

This is what the space cannister looks like now it's open - look at all that space dust inside!

When they managed to gain access to the final samples NASA's Planetary Science Division excitedly posted on social media saying: "It's open! It's open!"

The samples will now be weighed, packaged and stored at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

70.3 grams of dust from the asteroid has already been collected, which is over 10 grams more than scientists were hoping to bring back.

Nasa has been trying to open the stuck cannisters for months

As if this story isn't mind-bending enough, Nasa plans to put most of the Bennu sample straight into the archive to preserve for future generations.

That's to save it for scientists who may not even have been born yet, to work in laboratories that haven't been built yet, using instrumentation that still hasn't been invented yet. Wow.