NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft attempted to swipe space souvenirs from Bennu Tuesday to bring home to Earth.

Artist's conception of NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu.

Editors' note: Osiris-Rex has touched down on Bennu.

NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft briefly touched down on a large asteroid Tuesday to swipe some rocks and dust from its surface to be returned to Earth for study, and on Wednesday, NASA revealed the first batch of images.

The touch-and-go, or TAG, sample collection of asteroid 101955 Bennu was deemed a success at around 3:12 p.m.

The basic plan is that Osiris-Rex will touch down on Bennu at a rocky landing site dubbed Nightingale.

The van-size spacecraft will need to negotiate building-size boulders around the landing area to touch down on a relatively clear space that's only as large as a few parking spaces.

The descent to the surface of Bennu will take roughly four hours, about the time it takes the asteroid to make one full revolution.

After this slow approach, the actual TAG sample collection procedure remarkably lasts less than 16 seconds. .

Immediately after collecting its sample, Osiris-Rex fires its thrusters to back away from Bennu

Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft successfully returned tiny grains of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa to Earth in 2010

Its successor, Hayabusa-2, fired a special copper bullet at the large asteroid Ryugu in 2019 and then retrieved some of the shrapnel