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NASA’s first asteroid sample on track for Sunday parachute landing in Utah

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NASA’s first asteroid sample on track for Sunday parachute landing in Utah


LOS ANGELES, Sept 23 (Reuters) – A NASA space capsule carrying a sample of rocky material plucked from the surface of an asteroid three years ago hurtled toward Earth this weekend headed for a fiery plunge through the atmosphere and a parachute landing in the Utah desert on Sunday.

Weather forecasts were favorable and the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx was on course to release the sample-return capsule for final descent as planned, with no further adjustments to its flight path needed, NASA officials said at a news briefing on Friday.

Mission managers are expecting a “spot-on” touchdown on the U.S. military’s vast Utah Test and Training range, west of Salt Lake City, said Sandra Freund, program manager at Lockheed Martin, which designed and built the spacecraft.

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The round, gumdrop-shaped capsule is scheduled to land by parachute at 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT), about 13 minutes after streaking into the top of the atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, capping a seven-year voyage.

If successful, the OSIRIS-REx mission, a joint effort between NASA and scientists at the University of Arizona, would mark the third asteroid sample, and by far the largest, ever returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan’s space agency over the past 13 years.

OSIRIS-REx collected its specimen from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999 and classified as a “near-Earth object” because it passes relatively close to our planet every six years. Scientists put the odds of it striking Earth at 1-in-2,700 in the late 22nd century.

Bennu is small as asteroids go, measuring just 1,600 feet (500 meters) in diameter – slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall but tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Like other asteroids, Bennu is a primordial relic of the early solar system whose present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. It thus holds valuable clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and may even contain organic molecules similar to those necessary for life to evolve.

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“We’re literally looking at geologic materials that formed before Earth even existed,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told reporters last month.

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting the asteroid before venturing close enough to sink its robot arm into the loose surface on Oct. 20, 2020, in a grab-and-go maneuver.

The spacecraft embarked on a 1.2-billion-mile cruise back to Earth in May 2021.

The Bennu sample is estimated at 250 grams (8.8 ounces), far surpassing the amount of material carried back from asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and asteroid Itokawa in 2010.

On arrival, the new sample will be flown by helicopter to a “clean room” set up at the Utah test range for initial examination, then transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

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The main portion of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, meanwhile, is expected to sail on to explore yet another near-Earth asteroid.

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Utah Hockey Club Owner Ryan Smith Builds Buzz With Free Ticket Giveaway

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Utah Hockey Club Owner Ryan Smith Builds Buzz With Free Ticket Giveaway


When you’re the Utah Hockey Club, giving away 2,000 tickets to a regular-season game is a cause for celebration, not alarm.

After all, not every pro sports team team has an unused inventory of ‘single goal view seats’ that it can tap as a tool to help entice new fans.

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It started with a simple tweet from Utah Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith ahead of the club’s home game against the Vancouver Canucks last Wednesday.

In a followup, Smith said that he’d planned to give away the eight seats in his owner’s suite. But when he got more than 700 responses, he decided to open the invitation wider.

In the end, he put 2,000 extra people into Delta Center on top of the usual sold-out crowd of 11,131. And the fans got a good show as Utah staged a third-period rally from a 2-0 deficit before Mikhail Sergachev buried the game-winner on a 2-on-1 with 12 seconds left in overtime.

Acquired in a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning during the 2024 NHL draft weekend, Sergachev has been a massive difference-maker for the Utah team in its first season in its new home. Helping to fill holes after fellow veteran blueliners John Marino and Sean Durzi went down early with long-term injuries, 26-year-old Sergachev is averaging 25:45 a game, third-most in the entire NHL.

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With eight goals and 26 points in 33 games to date, the two-time Stanley Cup winner is also on pace to match his previous career high of 64 points in a season, set in 2022-23.

Another standout has been goaltender Karel Vejmelka. The 28-year-old now sits second in the NHL with 16.5 goals saved above expected according to MoneyPuck, and has amassed a career-best save percentage of .918.

After their vagabond years in Arizona, including their last two seasons as secondary tenants at 4,600-seat Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the re-established Utah team would come out of the gate as road warriors. Unbeaten in regulation in their last eight games, with a record of 6-0-2, they’re up to 11-6-2 on the road this season.

Utah’s home win over Vancouver last Wednesday boosted the squad to 5-5-3 on home ice. The club followed up on Sunday with a 5-4 shootout loss to the Anaheim Ducks, which has the team just outside of the Western Conference wild-card picture with one more game to go before the NHL’s three-day holiday break — hosting the Dallas Stars as part of a 13-game slate on Monday.

On Dec. 2, the Stars earned a 2-1 win at the Delta Center — Utah’s only regulation loss since Nov. 24. The Western Conference standings are tight, but the new club is trending positively toward making the playoffs in its inaugural season. The Coyotes’ only post-season appearance in the franchise’s last 12 years came as part of the expanded 24-team field in the 2020 pandemic bubble, when they eliminated the Nashville Predators in the best-of-three qualifying round before falling to the Colorado Avalanche.

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Of the ice, Smith and his wife and co-owner, Ashley, have already helped make winners out of their 31 fellow NHL owners. Smith Entertainment Group’s $1.2 billion purchase of Arizona’s hockey assets last April fueled a 140 percent increase in the valuation of the franchise — a key metric in the league’s 44 percent increase in average valuations in 2024 per Forbes estimates, which dramatically outpaces the growth of the other North American sports over the last year.

The rosy economic picture for the Utah Hockey Club and the league as a whole bodes well for the next round of collective bargaining. While the current deal is not set to expire until the end of the 2025-26 season, commissioner Gary Bettman indicated at the league’s board of governors’ meetings in Florida earlier this month that he and NHL Players’ Association executive director Marty Walsh plan to start formal discussions in February, with an eye toward potentially completing an agreement before the end of this hockey year.



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Washington EDGE Lance Holtzclaw transfers to Utah

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Washington EDGE Lance Holtzclaw transfers to Utah


Lance Holtzclaw has found a new home. The former Washington edge rusher entered the transfer portal after three years on Montlake and has signed with one of the Huskies’ former Pac-12 opponents, the Utah Utes.

Now in the Big 12, coach Kyle Whittingham’s team should be a good fit for the 6-foot-3, 225-pound pass rush specialist, which finished third in the conference in total defense, allowing 329.7 yards per game in its first year in the conference.

The Utes also finished fifth in the conference with 24 sacks, a statistic that Holtzclaw may be able to assist with if he can see the field more often.

In three years with the Huskies, the former three-star recruit who is originally from Dorchester, Massachusetts, played in 26 games and tallied 13 tackles, 2 sacks, and a fumble recovery.

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Holtzclaw’s most notable moment in a Husky uniform came in Washington’s 26-21 win over the USC Trojans in November. He came in on fourth down and pressured quarterback Miller Moss, forcing an errant throw in the game’s final seconds. He also completes an effective defensive line trade between the two schools, after the Huskies added a commitment from former Utah defensive tackle Simote Pepa last week.



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Dybantsa, Mandaquit lead Utah Prep to ‘Iolani Classic title | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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Dybantsa, Mandaquit lead Utah Prep to ‘Iolani Classic title | Honolulu Star-Advertiser




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