The probe will soon – together with a very precious cargo – set course towards our planet.
NASA has announced that the final months of OSIRIS-REx have arrived in the vicinity of Bennu; on May 10, the probe will leave the asteroid and head towards Earth. Then in September 2023 to release a capsule filled with surface material from Bennu. That capsule then descends towards the surface, where scientists are eager to study and analyze its contents.
Valuable freight
“We believe OSIRIS-REx has collected more than 60 grams of pristine asteroid material,” says project scientist Jason Dworkin Scientias.nl. “Probably even a few hundred grams. We hope this treasure will enable scientists to answer questions about the origins of life on Earth. ”
The material the researchers eagerly await was collected last year. The probe – which had nestled in orbit around Bennu much earlier – descended towards the surface and retrieved with the help of a special robotic arm-mounted sampling head some material from Nightingale crater, located in the northern hemisphere of the asteroid. The sampling was successful. A little too successful, you could say. Because not much later OSIRIS-REx turned out to have collected so much material that small pieces of surfactant escaped the sample head. To prevent a lot of valuable material from being lost, NASA decided to accelerate the storage of the sample in the Sample Return Capsule (SRC). And it worked.
“Delivering a sample to Earth is a bit like clay pigeon shooting”
Building blocks of the solar system
And so, in 2023, researchers are in for a nice present: a capsule, richly filled with materials that can tell us not only about Bennu, but also about the formation of the entire solar system, including our planet teeming with life. Bennu is about 4.5 billion years old, but virtually untouched and in a sense a time capsule in itself, which can give us a unique insight into the young solar system and the materials that were available there. “Carbonaceous asteroids like Bennu contain a wide variety of organic molecules, such as amino acids, and harbor the primal minerals that make up the planets,” Dworkin explains. “We therefore hope to find the molecular precursors that led to the creation of life and the building blocks of the solar system.”
Dress covers
But before we get our hands on the promising material collected by OSIRIS-REx, the probe must first begin its return journey to Earth. However, scientists aren’t too concerned about that. “The maneuvers required to leave Bennu are much simpler than the maneuvers we used to put and keep OSIRIS-REx in orbit around Bennu,” said Michael Moreau, OSIRIS-REx vice project manager. Scientias.nl. “The probe will leave Bennu on May 10 and set course for Earth. And if necessary, we can make minor course corrections along the way. ” It will be more exciting to ensure that OSIRIS-REx is in the right place at the right time by 2023. “It’s a bit like clay pigeon shooting,” said Moreau. “OSIRIS-REx and Earth must arrive at exactly the same point in the solar system on September 24, 2023, so that the Sample Return Capsule can be delivered to earth. ”
Extended mission?
Originally, the delivery of the monster to Earth was supposed to be OSIRIS-REx’s latest achievement. But NASA is toying with the idea of extending the mission and sending the probe to a new destination after the monster arrives on Earth. “As soon as OSIRIS-REx de Sample Return Capsule it will make a maneuver and start circling the interior of the solar system. NASA expects OSIRIS-REx to still function properly at that point and have substantial fuel reserves. The mission team is currently assessing whether it is feasible to send the probe to other destinations, ”said Moreau.
Final tasks
While NASA is plotting a future for OSIRIS-REx, the probe is still orbiting Bennu for now. In the coming period, the probe will, among other things, take a last look at the sampled location. “Observing how the space probe has interacted with Bennu’s surface is important to better understand the properties of Bennu’s regolith and the context of the collected material (…) In addition, the observations provide the team with an opportunity to explore the functionality of the scientific assess instruments onboard the probe. ” And that in turn is important for the question of whether OSIRIS-REx can handle a mission extension.
OSIRIS-REx is not the first probe to collect material on an asteroid and return it to Earth. The Japanese space probe Hayabusa1 already delivered material from asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. And its successor Hayabusa2 brought material from asteroid Ryugu to Earth in December 2020. It certainly does not make the materials that NASA has now collected any less valuable, Dworkin explains. Because one asteroid is not the other. “The samples (collected at Itokawa, ed.) Were expected to be very dry and contain little organic material and that turned out to be the case. Ryugu was wetter again and should be richer in organic matter than Itokawa. And although Ryugu and Bennu have the same shapes, the spectra show that Bennu is more watery than Ryugu. Observations indicate that the two asteroids each have a different history. A comparison of the two asteroids from space has already revealed several unexpected differences and similarities, and I can’t wait to see how these are reflected in the samples collected on these two different asteroids. ”-
Scientists still have to be patient; it will take another 2.5 years before we can expect Bennu’s material on earth. But it is worth the wait. Because the materials can probably not only answer the questions that have occupied astronomers for years, but also provide insight into riddles we are not even aware of yet. The intention is that the sample will also remain available to future generations of scientists. “They will examine the sample in order to get answers to questions we don’t even think about yet.”
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