Gallery: A Look at Past Space Sample-Return Missions

Astronaut Alan Bean held a container of lunar soil, with mission commander Charles Conrad, Jr., in the reflection of his visor. Apollo 12 was one of a number of Apollo missions that brought samples back to Earth. During Apollo 12, astronauts located Surveyor 3, a lander that arrived on the Moon in 1967, and collected samples surrounding the spacecraft, along with soil that Surveyor had scooped off the surface. They also brought home bits of Surveyor to see how it was affected by its extended exposure to the lunar environment. In all, Apollo 12 returned 75 lb. of rock sample. Other sample-return missions included Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
According to NASA, one of the most significant findings from the study of lunar rocks and soil was to confirm the theory that the Moon was formed from debris that was created in a collision with a Mars-size object billions of years ago. Samples from Apollo are still being studied and have been the subject of thousands of scientific papers.
 

Luna 16 was the Soviet Union’s first of three sample-return missions. It drilled 35 cm (14 in.) into the lunar surface, then transferred a drill tube to a soil sample container and returned home to Earth after 26 hr., 25 min. on the Moon. The spacecraft’s lower stage stayed on the Moon, transmitting temperature and radiation data. It was followed by subsequent sample-return missions Luna 20 and Luna 24.

Stardust, an 849-lb. spacecraft launched by NASA on Feb. 7, 1999, flew by the Wild 2 comet, collecting dust on silica panels and snapping 72 images of the comet's nucleus. This first mission to collect samples from a comet returned more than 10,000 particles, among them amino acid glycine, indicating that these building blocks of life are present elsewhere in the universe. 

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched two missions to study asteroids, the first in May 2003 and a follow-on mission in 2014. The first mission crashed into the asteroid Itokawa but still returned to Earth with thousands of particles from the asteroid. During Hyabusa2, the spacecraft deployed two rovers and a small lander to the asteroid Ryugu and returned a sample container in December 2020 to the Australian outback. Early results indicate the presence on the asteroids of water-rich minerals, organic material and materials formed at high temperatures. This mission closely resembles the recently landed Osiris-Rex, and NASA plans to share its samples with JAXA.

China launched its Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission in November 2020. After landing on the Moon, it got to work. During its first two days there, it conducted about 15 sample runs, scooping and drilling as much as 1 m (3.3 ft.) deep. It collected 1.73 kg (3.8 lb.) of regolith and stored the material in a container for return to the Earth by Dec. 16, 2020.

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer used a robotic arm to dip down to the surface of the Bennu asteroid and snatch an estimated 250-gram (8.8-oz.) sample of rocks and dust. The Sample Return Capsule safely landed on Sept. 24 in Utah and has been flown to NASA Johnson Space Center, where the results will be analyzed.