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[music throughout] As we started to approach Bennu

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from a distance and it started to fill up the camera field of view

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it looked exactly like we thought it would

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with a few boulders sticking out. But as we got closer we expected to see a very sandy surface

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with maybe a few boulders here and there, and what we saw is

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very little sand. And we saw these mountains, we saw boulders, we saw rocks

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we saw very few areas that had this sandy surface that we were expecting and that we had designed for

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We have never done this before.

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We're actually going to collect a sample and bring it back down to Earth for further examination by scientists.

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In order to achieve that objective

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the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been navigating around Bennu for about the last two years

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studying it in great detail, and also overcoming a number of challenges that Bennu has presented.

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We were looking for locations on Bennu that were 50 meters in diameter

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relatively flat and covered with fine-grained material.

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and by fine-grained material, I mean stuff that's the size of a dime or smaller.

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We realized that there were no sites on Bennu that even came close to meeting this criteria

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Everywhere we looked was too small and covered with boulders

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So we actually had to fly a number of additional close pases over the asteroid

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and rethink our entire plan for grabbing the sample