After landing on an asteroid nearly three years ago and taking samples from a rocky surface, the OSIRIS-REx mission is finally on home range. NASA is preparing for a special delivery of rock samples next month, and the agency just put together its most realistic drills for the big day.
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From July 18 to July 20, the team behind the mission trained to retrieve a dummy sample return capsule at the Utah Department of Defense Test and Training Range, the same site where the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will drop samples of a real asteroid, NASA book in a blog post.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to drop samples from the asteroid Bennu on September 24. The plan was for the spacecraft to drop off its precious payload during flight, after which the capsule containing the asteroid samples would make a parachute-assisted landing in the Utah desert. The capsule should descend at 37 miles by 9 miles (59 km by 15 km) about 13 minutes after being launched by the spacecraft, but that’s not the hard part.
Once it hits the ground, the ground team must move quickly to move the sample into a clean room so it doesn’t contaminate material from our planet (which would ruin the entire mission). So, the pressure to make this process seamless.
photo: NASA/Keegan Barber.
About 80 miles (128 kilometers) southwest of Salt Lake City, the team behind the mission collected soil samples from the desert to put them in mock capsules similar to those holding asteroid samples. Team members then practiced packing dummy sample capsules to board a helicopter for transport to an emergency clean room.
photo: NASA/Keegan Barber.
Once packed, the dummy capsule is taken by helicopter for a short practice flight to a temporary clean room located at a military outreach site.
Recovery crews will also collect soil and air samples around the capsule’s landing area to help determine if any contaminants came into contact with the asteroid samples.
This is NASA’s first attempt to recover samples from an asteroid and it took a long time to make them. OSIRIS-REx was launched on September 8, 2016 and encountered the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in October 2020. After hitting an asteroid chunk, OSIRIS-REx began to return home. By bringing asteroid samples back to Earth, scientists will be able to closely analyze space rocks to help uncover clues about the origins of life on Earth and whether asteroids brought the building blocks of life to our planet.
After dropping OSIRIS-REx from Bennu’s sample back to Earth, the spacecraft will embark on another adventure to explore the asteroid Apophis in 2029.
For more space flights in your life, stay tuned Twitter and special bookmarks for Gizmodo space flight page.
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2023-07-22 00:57:39
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