In 2018, OSIRIS-REx will approach Bennu – which is the size of a small mountain – and begin an intricate dance with the asteroid, mapping and studying Bennu in preparation for sample collection.
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“I can’t tell you how thrilled I was this evening”, Lauretta said.
NASA launched the Osris-REx Spacecraft on Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
What OSIRIS-REx will do?
The main spacecraft will remain in orbit around the Sun after the sample return and Earth flyby. Despite extensive observations of Bennu from ground and space telescopes, no one knows exactly what to expect there, and it could be hard if not impossible to anchor a spacecraft on the surface, Lauretta said.
In 2010, JAXA, the Japanese space agency, was the first institution to prove a spacecraft could collect dust samples from an asteroid, but the agency was able to retrieve only a few micrograms of material.
“We’re going to fly a spacecraft onto the surface of an asteroid”.
Scientists are hoping that further study could help them understand more about the formation of the solar system and the source of organic compounds that led to the formation of life.
It’s a big mission for a small sample: The spacecraft is heading about 750,000 miles into space to one of several thousand near-Earth asteroids.
The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for a return to Earth in September 2023.
It will take two years for Osiris-Rex to reach Bennu, with the sampling actually taking place in 2020 after two years of science observations to pick the ideal grab-and-go spot. If the craft can safely extract and return at least 2 ounces of the loose material sitting on the bedrock of the carbonaceous asteroid, it will be considered a success.
The name stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.
“We are going out to explore an unknown world”, said principal scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona at Tucson. Nitrogen gas then blows on the surface to stir up the particles and snatch them up.
Bennu, with a diameter of 492 meters, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth in the 22nd century. The mother spacecraft will continue its orbit of the sun.
Bennu was not selected at random, said Dr. Jeffrey Grossman, the mission’s program scientist at NASA.
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The effect is tiny, but over the centuries could make the difference between a threatening asteroid either hitting or a missing the Earth.
