The surface of the asteroid Bennu, which is several hundred million kilometers away, is unpredictable and full of rocks – and the landing attempt is described as a challenge.
The space drama takes place on Tuesday, and the goal of the landing is to retrieve a sample from the ground and return the small pieces of the asteroid back to Earth. Only Japan has done it before.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft is the size of a van and will try to land on an area about the size of a tennis court in the crater Nightingale. Stones the size of buildings make operation difficult. The asteroid has a radius of about 250 meters.
– To put it in perspective, the next time you park in front of your house or outside a cafe. Think of the challenge of navigating Osiris-Rex to one of these places from 320 million kilometers away, says project manager Mike Moreau at Nasa.
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Several attempts
The vessel plans to spend four hours getting to the surface. Then the vessel’s 3.4 meter long arm should extend to the ground and pick up samples during the five to ten second long landing.
If the first attempt fails, Osiris-Rex can try again. The collected samples will not be back on earth until 2023.
NASA has previously managed to bring comet dust and solar wind particles back to Earth, but has never tried to obtain samples from an asteroid.
Japan, for its part, is waiting to receive samples from the asteroid Ryugu in December, ten years after retrieving material from the asteroid Itokawa.
Key to understanding the origin of life
The asteroid Bennu is particularly attractive because it existed while the solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists consider it a time capsule with building blocks that can explain how life came to be on Earth and elsewhere.
In addition, Nasa will find out more about the asteroid because it will possibly target our planet at the end of the 21st century. Nasa estimates that there is a 1: 2700-part chance that it will hit Earth.
There have been several delays in the project, partly due to unexpectedly difficult terrain and the coronavirus. Osiris-Rex has fuel for three landings, and will automatically back away if it encounters unexpected obstacles such as large rocks.
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