This video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explains how and why the OSIRIS-REx mission will grab a chunk off of the asteroid Bennu and bring it back to Earth.
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The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sits fine atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 – less than two km away where the Falcon 9 exploded on Thursday in a routine test firing ahead of a planned satellite launch into space.
Scientists will be able to create a detailed map of Bennu and characterize its surface composition and temperatures, before choosing a safe but scientifically interesting spot to collect a sample.
The OSIRIS-Rex space probe will spend two years chasing Bennu, which is on NASA’s list of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids because it could one day collide with Earth.
Asteroids from within our solar system had been known to harbor vast amounts of resources that can be found on Earth, but these space bodies contain these materials in high concentrations, such as carbon, iron, and a few more precious resources.
The good news is the space agency is going to send a craft to one of them, and for the first time ever, carry a sample of the asteroid back to Earth. It will investigate and collect samples of surface material to return to Earth in 2023 for further study. Previous NASA missions – including Galileo (1991), the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) (2000), Deep Space 1 (1999-2001), and DAWN (2011-Present) – have orbited or flown by asteroids and captured data using cameras and spectrometers. With funding from the Canadian Space Agency, five Canadian universities are participating in the OSIRIS-REx mission: the Universities of York, Calgary, Toronto, British Columbia and UWinnipeg.
OSIRIS-REx will keep flying and will go orbit the sun.
Edward Beshore, Deputy Principal Investigator for the mission, said: “If astronomers someday identify an asteroid that presents a significant impact hazard to Earth, the first step will be to gather more information about that asteroid”.
GETTYThe asteroid could hit us in the next 200 years, and, as yet there is nothing we could do. 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 name OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for the spacecraft’s mission objectives: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer. The main OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will remain in orbit around the Sun after the sample return and Earth flyby. It is the first time Canada is part of an worldwide mission to return a sample from an asteroid to Earth.
The detailed maps will help scientists understand more about the part of the asteroid that their sample comes from, she said.
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“It was a stark reminder to me and this whole team about the risks that we face in this business”, said Lauretta. Water from asteroids could be used in shields to protect spacecraft from cosmic rays and solar radiation. The winning entry was submitted by third grader, Michael Puzio of North Carolina. That material is interesting because it is rich in organic molecules, the precursors of the chemicals of life. The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021, when the departure window opens, and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.
