Illustration of OSIRIS-REx moving away from Earth after launching its return capsule. Image source: Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA CI Laboratory
NASA’S Osiris Rex Mission is scheduled to return the first US sample asteroid to Earth in September following a successful prototype drop test in the western Utah desert.
A NASA-led team in the western Utah desert is in the final stages of preparing for the arrival of the first samples from a US asteroid – which will land on Earth this month.
Market OSIRIS-REx NASA (Origin, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – regolith explorer) The sample capsule was dropped last Wednesday from an aircraft and landed in the landing area at the Utah Department of Defense Test and Training Site in the desert outside Salt Lake City. This was part of the mission’s last major test before the actual capsule arrived on September 24 with samples from the asteroid Bennu, which had been collecting in space for nearly three years.
A sample return capsule training model is displayed during a drop test in preparation for the return capsule sampling from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023, at the Department of Defense Test and Training Ground in Utah. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, and will return to Earth on September 24, landing by parachute at the Utah Test and Training Field. Credit: NASA/Kegan Barber
“We are now only weeks away from receiving a piece of Earth’s solar system history, and this successful drop test ensures we are ready,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The original material from the asteroid Bennu will help explain the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and possibly even how life began on Earth.”
Practice and anticipate
This drop test follows a series of previous exercises – capsule recovery, spacecraft engineering operations and sample handling procedures – which were conducted earlier this spring and summer.
Now, with less than four weeks until the spacecraft’s arrival, the OSIRIS-REx team is nearing the end of training and ready for actual delivery.
“I am very proud of the effort our team has put into this effort,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Just as our careful planning and training helped us collect samples from Bennu, we also honed our sampling skills.”
The capsule is expected to hold 8.8 ounces of rock material collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu by 2020. Researchers will study the sample in the coming years to learn how our planet and solar system formed, and the possible origins of the organic matter. gave birth to life on earth.
OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to return samples from an asteroid. The craft departed in September 2016 on a mission to explore a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. The mission’s dramatic finale will take place on September 24, 2023, when a capsule containing Bennu’s sample will land in the western Utah desert. Credit: NASA
Arrival of capsules and further processing
The capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. EST), traveling at approximately 27,650 miles per hour. Live coverage of the NASA capsule landing begins at 10 a.m. EST (8 a.m. EST) and will be broadcast on NASA TV, the NASA app, and Agency website.
“We are now in the final stages of this seven-year journey, and it is like the last few miles of a marathon, with emotions such as pride and excitement coexisting with an unwavering focus on finishing well.” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Once the capsule is recovered and packaged for travel, it will be flown to a temporary cleanroom at a military field, where it will undergo initial processing and disassembly in preparation for its flight to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where samples will be collected. collected, documented, maintained, and distributed for analysis to scientists around the world.
Collaborators and Partnerships
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is responsible for overall mission management, systems engineering, safety assurance, and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona, Tucson, led by Dante Lauretta, is the principal investigator, directing the science team and planning the science observations and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space builds the spacecraft and manages flight operations, while Goddard and KinetX Aerospace fly the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Samples for the mission, including processing when they reached Earth, were assigned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The mission also features international collaboration, featuring instruments from the Canadian Space Agency and examples of scientific collaboration with Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is a landmark mission under NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is overseen by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
2023-09-04 22:15:53
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