When the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx Pass by Earth next Sunday (24), it is expected to deliver a rare cosmic gift: a pristine sample collected from the nearby asteroid Bennu.
If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will launch a capsule containing about 250 grams of rocks and asteroid soil from space toward a landing zone in the Utah desert in the United States.
NASA will provide a live stream of the sample delivery starting at 10 am (local time) and 11 am (Brasília time) on Sunday. The capsule is expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 am US time, traveling at around 44,498 kilometers per hour. It will land in Utah about 13 minutes later.
After launching the capsule, OSIRIS-REx will continue its journey through the solar system to capture a detailed view of a different asteroid called Apophis.
Studying the sample could help scientists understand important details about the origins of our solar system, because asteroids are the “remains” of those early days, 4.5 billion years ago. But the sample could also provide information about Bennu, which is likely to collide with Earth in the future.
The return of NASA’s first asteroid sample collected in space to Earth was years in the making. See some mission milestones so far and what’s to come.
Cosmic tour of a spaceship
OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, has been on quite a journey over the past seven years. Launched from Cape Canaveral in 2016, the NASA spacecraft reached Bennu’s orbit in December 2018.
The first US mission sent to a near-Earth asteroid, OSIRIS-REx, has made history several times over. It performed the closest orbit of a planetary body by a spacecraft. Bennu became the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft.
OSIRIS-REx surveyed the asteroid in its entirety to determine the best location to collect a sample. Bennu, an asteroid stacked in the shape of a top, is about 500 meters wide and is composed of rocks held together by gravity.
Images of Bennu provided by the probe provided the mission team with unprecedented information about the asteroid, which included the discovery of water ice trapped in Bennu’s rocks and carbon in a form widely associated with biology. The team also witnessed the release of particles from the asteroid into space.
The spacecraft spiraled closer and closer to the asteroid until it entered a historic TAG, or Touch-and-Go, sample collection event on October 20, 2020.
Along the way, challenges threatened the success of the mission, including the fact that the spacecraft’s sampling head collected so much material that the container failed to seal properly, leaking precious material from the asteroid into space.
During the historic collection event, the sampling head of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sank 0.5 meters into the asteroid’s surface. Apparently, Bennu’s exterior is made of compressed particles that aren’t held together securely, based on what happened when the spacecraft collected a sample. If the spacecraft had not fired its thruster to retreat after quickly collecting dust and rocks, it could have sunk straight into the asteroid.
It was then that the mission team discovered that the asteroid’s surface is similar to a pit of plastic balls.
The OSIRIS-REx team was able to meet and overcome these challenges, and the probe is scheduled to return the largest sample collected by a NASA mission since Apollo astronauts brought back lunar rocks decades ago.
The team was also able to organize a final flyby of Bennu by the spacecraft in April 2021, giving it the opportunity to see how OSIRIS-REx perturbed and altered the asteroid’s surface during the collection event.
The before-and-after photos showed some intriguing differences created by collecting samples and firing the spacecraft’s thrusters after it moved away from the asteroid, including the movement and rearrangement of large rocks on the asteroid’s surface.
Returning to Earth
Since bidding farewell to Bennu in May 2021, OSIRIS-REx has been on a return journey to Earth, orbiting the Sun twice so it can pass by our planet at the right time to drop off the asteroid sample.
NASA and Lockheed Martin Space have spent much of this year rehearsing each step of the sample recovery process.
If the spacecraft’s trajectory is on track, the sample capsule is expected to be released from OSIRIS-REx 102,000 kilometers from Earth on Sunday morning. Since leaving Bennu, the spacecraft has made numerous maneuvers and fired its thrusters to fly past Earth at the right time to release the capsule. The capsule will land in a 58-kilometer by 14-kilometer area at the Department of Defense’s Utah testing and training range.
Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule to a soft landing at 11.7 miles per hour, and recovery teams will be ready to recover the capsule as soon as it is safe to do so, said Sandra Freund, Lockheed’s OSIRIS-REx program manager. Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and help recover the capsule.
A helicopter will transport the sample on a cargo net and deliver it to a temporary clean room established at the stand in June. There, a team will prepare the sample container for transport on a C-17 aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (25). Details about the sample will be revealed through a NASA broadcast on October 11.
Scientists will analyze the rocks and soil over the next two years in a dedicated clean room inside the Johnson Space Center.
It is crucial to understand more about the population of near-Earth asteroids, like Bennu, that may be on a collision course with our planet. A better understanding of their composition and orbits is critical to predicting which asteroids may make the closest approaches to Earth and when, as well as developing methods to deflect these asteroids.
The sample will be divided and sent to laboratories around the world, including OSIRIS-REx mission partners at the Canadian Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. About 70% of the sample will remain intact in storage so that future generations with better technology can learn even more than is now possible.
See also: Illusion or real? Mouse, finger, portal and even spider: what NASA “found” on Mars
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
