When to Use Bennu + OSIRIS-REx TAG Sample Return 3D Explorer - Best Sessions and Limits
Open Bennu + OSIRIS-REx TAG Sample Return 3D Explorer when you need a clear picture of NASA's real 2020 touch-and-go sample grab on asteroid Bennu and the surprising "ball pit" surface finding it revealed - not a live tracker and not a contact-dynamics simulation.
A sample-return lesson
A lesson starts by clicking "Simulate TAG" and watching the spacecraft's arm sink into Bennu's surface, then reading the facts panel's real sample mass, return date, and impact-risk figures.
Sessions this explorer does not fit
Sessions this page does not fit are a numerically integrated descent-and-contact simulation - Bennu's bumpy shape is a procedural teaching shape and the TAG sequence is a scripted state machine timed for clarity, not a physics solver - or a live tracker of Bennu or the renamed OSIRIS-APEx spacecraft today. For a different agency's touch-and-go sample-return mission with its own artificial-impactor crater, use the Hayabusa2-Ryugu Sample Return 3D Explorer; for a spacecraft that deliberately crashed into an asteroid to test planetary defense, use the DART Asteroid Deflection 3D Explorer. Walk the controls in the step-by-step guide.
Why trust these tools
- Ten-plus years of web tooling. The freetoolonline editorial team has shipped browser-based utilities since 2015. The goal has never changed: get you to a working output fast, without an install.
- No install, no sign-up. Open a tool and get a working output in seconds - nothing to download and no account to create. Tools that need heavy processing run it on our service, so even a low-powered machine gets the job done.
- Analytics stops at the page view. We measure which pages get visited, not what you type or upload inside a tool. There is nothing to sign in to and no profile is attached to your input.
- Open-source core components. The processing engines underneath (libheif, libde265, pdf-lib, terser, clean-css, ffmpeg.wasm, and others) are public and audit-able. We link to each one in its tool page's footer.
- Free, with or without ads. All tools are fully functional without sign-up. The Disable Ads button in the header is always available if you need a distraction-free run.