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OSIRIS-REx overflows with asteroid samples after bagging bounty from Bennu:

The sampling mechanism on NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is stuffed with specimens captured from asteroid Bennu earlier this week — so full that some of the rocks are floating out into space.

Officials said Friday they will stow the samples inside the mission's Earth return capsule sooner than planned to minimize the loss of asteroid material.

"We had a successful sample collection attempt, almost too successful," said Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator from the University of Arizona. "Material is escaping, and we're expediting stow as a result of that."

NASA's $1 billion Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer aims to become the first U.S. spacecraft to complete a round-trip journey to an asteroid.

After a nearly two-year close-up survey of asteroid Bennu — a clump of rock measuring a third of a mile (500 meters) wide — the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descended to the airless world Tuesday for a celestial smash and grab. Its goal was to capture at least 2.1 ounces, or 60 grams, of pebbles, rock fragments and dust particles for return to Earth.

[...] Lauretta said Friday he is "highly confident" the sample collection attempt was successful, and that it collected "abundant mass, definitely evidence of hundreds of grams of material, and possibly more."

"My big concern now is that the particles are escaping because we're almost a victim of our own success here," Lauretta said Friday afternoon in a conference call with reporters.

Also at CNN.

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