This is a still from an animation showing what a larger spaceship does after firing a small capsule toward Earth. The capsule is filled with samples from an asteroid.
The description, from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s archives on Flickr, is:
After releasing the capsule, OSIRIS-REx fires its thrusters to avoid colliding with Earth.
Animation credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
For the full animation visit: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20381
OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016 to recover samples from asteroid Bennu. In 2020,those samples got scooped up and started a journey back to Earth. This shows what scientists hoped would happen in 2023, when the rock and dust got shot back to the Utah desert by an orbiting space probe that would then course-correct to avoid hitting Earth itself. What this picture shows is the final moments of that course-correction.
In 2023, things unfolded basically according to plan. We’ve been studying those samples ever since. Most recently, last December, researchers found quantities of ribose and glucose — sugars — in the samples from Bennu, which gives us some clues as to how life may have formed in the early solar system.