“We got everything just exactly ideal”, Lauretta, who’s based at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), said during a postlaunch news conference Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
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“I can’t tell you how thrilled I was this evening”, Lauretta said.
“Today, we celebrate a huge milestone for this remarkable mission, and for this mission team”, said Charles Bolden, Administrator of NASA.
“Tonight is a night for celebration”. OSIRIS-REx is embarking on a mission to Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid that scientists think might hold clues about the origins of our solar system.
While addressing media at KSC, Nye said that all of them are very excited regarding the mission, as it will increase their understanding and knowledge about the initial stages of the solar system. Neither is vacuuming samples off an asteroid.
The collection device, known as the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), should pick up around two ounces (60 grams) from the asteroid, but in tests so far it has generally picked up five times that amount.
NASA and scientists have plenty of other objectives for OSIRIS REx, but its prospect of finding billions-years-old chemical evidence in one of the few places that might have it – almost eternally wandering asteroids – opens all sorts of prospects of scientific study on the origins of life.
The OSIRIS-REx launch went off without a hitch.
Osiris-Rex’s freed sample container – the same kind used for the comet-dust retrieval – will parachute down with the pristine asteroid treasure in Utah. In 2023 it will make its way back into the Earth’s atmosphere and will fall down to Earth.
Bennu, with a diameter of 492 m, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199.
“We are really going to understand the distribution of materials across the surface of that asteroid”, he said.
NASA scientists chose 101955 Bennu for the OSIRIS-REx mission because of its unique supply of unadulterated carbonaceous material, one of the building blocks of life.
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OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023, when it will then be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for examination. Scientists hope to gather dust and gravel from the dark space rock and bring it back to Earth – marking the largest sample return since the Apollo missions, roughly half a century ago.
