this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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To be fair, they probably spent a decade or more planning, designing, building, launching, and completing the actual sample return. Once the actual samples are safely in the lab, I'm sure there are no deadlines whatsoever. Take whatever time it takes to do it right.
I'm sure avoiding contaminating the sample was the requirement that had them acting very cautiously. The comments saying that an angle grinder could have it open in 5 minutes were so annoying. Of course NASA engineers could bust it open if that's all they cared about. The whole point of collecting a sample is to take extremely precise measurements of the contents. Any grinding wheel or saw, would risk adding contamination that would mess up the analysis.