Watch a NASA spacecraft collect pebbles from the ancient asteroid Bennu - Salon

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made history on Tuesday when its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from an asteroid, Bennu, that scientists believe may have had water on its surface earlier in its history.

OSIRIS-REx briefly touched the asteroid's surface in order to gather rocks, pebbles and other geological artifacts from the celestial body so that they could be brought back to Earth by 2023, according to NASA.

"You can see that particles are flying all over the place," Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, told reporters in a news briefing on Wednesday.

"We really did kind of make a mess on the surface of this asteroid, but it's a good mess.

According to the agency, on Tuesday OSIRIS-REx used its thrusters to push itself out of orbit around Bennu, where it has been since 2018.

Amy Simon, deputy instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, elaborated on this at the time, explaining that "the presence of hydrated minerals across the asteroid confirms that Bennu, a remnant from early in the formation of the solar system, is an excellent specimen for the OSIRIS-REx mission to study the composition of primitive volatiles and organics.

When samples of this material are returned by the mission to Earth in 2023, scientists will receive a treasure trove of new information about the history and evolution of our solar system.".