On: OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return [video]

[Symmetry]

For a moment I was afraid the drogue shoot had failed to deploy. But congrats to NASA for getting an asteroid sample safely back to Earth!

[oittaa → Symmetry]

I saw people speculating that maybe the drogue failed to deploy and that's why it landed 3 minutes earlier than predicted. https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1705958092842615042

[dotnet00 → oittaa]

There are also reports the main chute deployed much earlier, which doesn't seem like it'd fit with the early landing https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1705961833893400593

[placesalt → dotnet00]

They said during the broadcast that it deployed at 20kft instead of the planned 5kft.

But GGP is correct, it really did look for a little while there like it maybe hadn't deployed on time.

[abracadaniel → oittaa]

It certainly looked that way from the stream, but the drogue chutes can be on much longer tethers, so maybe it was out of frame? If they were able to do it without the drogue, that’s pretty impressive.