More than six years have passed since NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft embarked on its sole mission. Unlike most NASA expeditions, the spacecraft’s destination was not a planet or moon but a 450-meter-wide asteroid named 101955 Bennu. The goal of the mission is to collect a minimum of 60 grams of sample material from the asteroid and return it to Earth. Currently, it is on its way home with nearly 250 grams of original stone stored in its cupboard. And to add to the excitement, NASA has announced the return date of the spacecraft that will land on Earth and how it plans to recover samples.
NASA reported in a Press Release that its first mission will end on September 24 when the spacecraft will return to Earth. But the biggest challenge for the space agency still awaits. “After seven years in space, including a fingernail tap on Bennu to collect dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges: delivering small planet sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earth-borne contaminants,” the post explains.
NASA is about to receive asteroid samples
The big challenge in protecting it from contamination is because the location the capsule returned to will land in the Utah desert. And under such extreme conditions, the chance of the pristine material becoming contaminated with contaminants and potentially wasting any research on the sample to no avail is quite high.
So over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the processes needed to recover samples in Utah and transport them to the newly built lab for materials at Johnson Space Center of NASA in Houston. There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of the sample to the worldwide OSIRIS-REx science team for analysis, and organize the rest for other scientists to study, for now. and in future generations.
“The OSIRIS-REx team has performed incredible feats of characterization and sampling of the asteroid Bennu. These achievements are a direct result of extensive training and drills that we took step-by-step. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx, provides assistance.
comeback Earth samples from asteroid Bennu will be the culmination of a 12-year effort by NASA and its mission partners but mark the beginning of a new phase of discovery as scientists from around The world will pay attention to the analysis of this unique specimen. Precious documents dating back to our early formation solar system.
