The OSIRIS-REx rocket is moved to the launch pad on September 7, one day before the opening of the launch window.
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Once there, it will make observations and take measurements for the next two years, culminating in the collection of a surface sample of up to 70 ounces of material. Not only will the robotic probe named Osiris-Rex fly to this ancient asteroid, it will scout it out for two years before scooping up some gravel and dust, and deliver the samples back to Earth.
“This mission is significant because it will help scientists address the origin of our solar system, and where the Earth may have gotten its water”, said Cloutis.
Despite the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion at the neighbouring Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, US space agency NASA was confident that its asteroid sample return mission will launch on schedule on September 8.
As OSIRIS-REx approaches the Earth, the sample return capsule will eject from the spacecraft and land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City. Some of those planetesimals were prevented from assembling by Jupiter’s gravity and today they form a band of smaller objects beyond Mars that we call the asteroid belt.
If NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft were penning a memoir, it might be titled, “There and Back Again: A Spacecraft’s Tale”. “We want this to be a safe, slow high-five of that surface”, says NASA’s Christina Richey.
NASA racked up costs amounting to approximately $800 million. In addition to this array of instruments, the spacecraft will be returning up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of surface samples.
The Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) team is keen to hunt for organic molecules in the material the spacecraft sends home.
“This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come”, Lauretta said.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is on mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx.
Osiris-Rex will arrive at Bennu in 2018 and spend more than a year studying it and searching for an ideal location from which to collect the sample.
Scientists believe our solar system formed about four and a half billion years ago from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust. “I’m looking forward to the day in 2023 when we open up that sample return capsule”. “They rotate like the Earth does and that re-radiated heat acts like a tiny rocket thruster which can actually move the asteroid around”.
Scheeres said visiting Bennu will allow them to determine the asteroid’s orbit and the various physical forces that affect it. Collecting the sample will take only about five seconds, and if the first try is unsuccessful, OSIRIS-REx can try, try again – up to three times.
The payload fairing, measuring 14 feet in diameter and 39 feet long, shields the satellite during the climb through Earth’s atmosphere.
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-Sept. 24, 2023: Finally free of Osiris-Rex, which will continue to orbit the sun, the sample container re-enters the atmosphere at more than 27,000 miles per hour (43,450 kph). NO EARTH-ENDER Bennu is potentially hazardous, but no Earth-ender. The asteroid gets a little too close for comfort to the planet every six years or so and scientists predict the asteroid will swing perilously close to earth in 2135.
