NASA is getting ever closer to launching its first ever asteroid-sampling spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx.
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The launch window opens Thursday at 6:05 p.m. CDT for the probe’s seven-year roundtrip mission to the asteroid Bennu.
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) is the latest in a string of sample return missions, following the Stardust mission to the comet Wild 2 and the Hayabusa mission to asteroid Itokawa. For months it will hang out – take pictures, make scans of the asteroid’s surface and create a map.
According to NASA, the main goal of OSIRIS-Rex is to collect organic materials from the surface of Bennu.
“To me, the mission is driven by the return of pristine organic molecules from the early solar system so I’m really hopeful that we can get some unique material that isn’t in our meteorite collections”, Lauretta said at a recent NASA press conference to update reporters on the looming launch.
If all goes as planned, the capsule containing samples from Bennu will be jettisoned from the returning Osiris-Rex spacecraft on September 24, 2023, for a parachute descent and landing at the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range.
In July 2020, the spacecraft will briefly touch the surface of the asteroid to collect loose rocks and dust using its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or “TAGSAM”, and store the material in a sample return capsule. This rotation is slow enough for a spacecraft to reach out and suck in samples, using nitrogen gas to stir up the surface.
No problem has been detected with the OSIRIS-REx probe’s United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.
The University of Arizona’s ambitious mission to send a spacecraft to grab a soil sample from an asteroid is a first for US planetary exploration.
An illustration of OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at Bennu.
The spacecraft heads home in March 2021 and arrives back at Earth on September 24, 2023, but it won’t land. Now enclosed within its 13-foot (four-meter) diameter payload fairing, OSIRIS-REx has completed communications system testing and is ready to fly. Thermal analysis is key to predicting where Bennu’s orbit will take it.
Lauretta added he feels confident about this decision, especially after seeing what happened with the European Space Agency’s Philae lander.
“We’re going to get to asteroid Bennu and we’re going to map this brand new world that we’ve never seen before”.
Scientists estimate the rock – named 2004 BO41 after the year it was discovered – will make what NASA calls a “near Earth pass” this afternoon.
OSIRIS-Rex will pioneer a new and ambitious technique for gathering samples: a robotic arm equipped with a vacuum cleaner. It is the first time Canada is part of an global mission to return a sample from an asteroid to Earth.
Scientists say if an asteroid of 50 metres in length hit a city like London it could cause the damage of several nuclear bombs.
Bennu was selected as OSIRIS’s target in 2008 because the asteroid was one of only five that met multiple criteria – flight-path stability and proximity to Earth, size and speed of rotation, and an unaltered, carbon-rich composition. Don’t worry too much about that: There’s a 1 in 2,700 chance of Bennu plunging to the Earth 150 years from now.
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If there are SpaceX mission delays, other cargo spacecraft will be able to meet the station’s cargo needs, NASA said.
