First came the darkening skies, then the crescent-shaped shadows on the ground, and finally an eruption of cheers by crowds that gathered Saturday along the narrow path of a rare "ring of fire" eclipse of the sun.

It was a spectacular show for millions of people across the Americas as the moon moved into place and the ring formed.

There were hoots, hollers and yelps for those with an unfettered view in Albuquerque, where the celestial event coincided with an international balloon fiesta that typically draws tens of thousands of spectators and hundreds of hot air balloon pilots from around the world.

On September 24 this year, a NASA capsule parachuted down to Earth carrying a precious cache of material grabbed from an asteroid. The space agency has now revealed images and a preliminary analysis of the space rocks it found after lifting the lid off that capsule.

The mission to the asteroid was called Osiris-Rex, and in 2020, it collected a sample of material from the asteroid Bennu. Afterward, it traveled back to Earth and released the capsule containing the rocks into our atmosphere three weeks ago.

The fine black dust and small coal-like rocks shimmering in the capsule are beautiful—and somewhat unassuming. But this handful of space rock has the potential to answer questions about not only how the Earth was created, but also how water arrived here and how life got started.

After spending more than a year in space, Frank Rubio now has to get used to that pesky thing Earthlings call gravity.

"Walking hurts a little bit the first few days, the soles of your feet and lower back," he said at a news conference Friday at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.