The OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth and the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.
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OSIRIS-REx was lifted up on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in a textbook launch with a lovely evening for viewing.
“You can think of these asteroids as literally prebiotic chemical factories that were producing building blocks of life 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth formed, before life started here”, NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin said to the press before launch.
It’ll take the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft two years to get to the asteroid and another two years before it can land and collect samples.
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is proud to be supporting NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in its objective to analyze and return the first-ever asteroid sample for the United States. Mike Puzio of Greensboro, North Carolina, won a naming contest in 2013.
Osiris-Rex will be aiming for asteroid Bennu, a big, black, roundish rock that is circling the sun in a slightly wider orbit than Earth’s.
Round trip, the spacecraft will travel more than 4 billion miles.
The team opted for this touch-and-go procedure instead of landing to increase the odds of success.
Upon arrival, OSIRIS-REx will spend nearly two more years taking measurements and picking the best spot to vacuum up some surface material.
“We’re going to fly a spacecraft onto the surface of an asteroid”.
Lauretta described Bennu as a bit like a “small mountain in space”, approximately 1,600 feet in diameter. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City. The rest of OSIRIS-REx will stay in space and continue on an orbit around the Sun. It will make quick contact in July 2020 and return to Earth in 2023 with at least a 2-ounce sample.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is the size of an SUV and its name stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. Puzio, who was 9 at the time, thought the spacecraft’s robot arm and solar panels looked like the Bennu bird, also from Egyptian mythology. The estimated cost of the mission is more than $800 million.
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NASA’s asteroid-skimming spacecraft just blasted off into space without a hitch, completing the first step in a seven year journey that will eventually bring us back several spoonfuls worth of dirt from an asteroid. The odds are less than a tenth of 1%, according to Mr Lauretta.
