An Atlas V rocket just successfully launched NASA’s OSIRIS-REx vehicle into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, initiating the spacecraft’s journey to grab a sample from an asteroid and bring it back to Earth.
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At 7:05 pm EDT, the unmanned probe lifted off atop an Atlas/Centaur booster from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Scientists believe asteroids like Bennu have may have brought water and organic molecules to Earth and other planets.
Victory was declared an hour later as launch controllers shook hands and embraced after the spacecraft shot out of Earth’s orbit, bound for Bennu.
OSIRIS-REx will arrive at Bennu in August 2018, about two years after launch.
NASA hopes to collect between 60g and 2kg of material, which should return to Earth in 2023. NASA launched its campaign #ToBennuAndBack to highlight this one-of-a-kind mission of OSIRIS-REx, collecting space rock samples of non-Earth origin.
The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, but some of its essential components were designed and built right here in Arizona. Japan’s Hayabusa 1 probe managed to return a few tiny grains of asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010, the first asteroid sample return mission.
While scientists have planned to study the craft’s vacuumed-up material for two years, Grossman predicts that the rock chips and dust will be the subject of investigation for decades, noting that the original samples from the moon are still being studied today. The solar arrays deployed and are now powering OSIRIS-REx.
The US space agency also hopes Osiris-Rex will demonstrate the advanced imaging and mapping techniques needed for future science missions and for upcoming commercial asteroid-mining expeditions.
But OSIRIS-REx won’t land.
If all goes as planned, OSIRIS will return to Earth on September 24, 2023, giving scientists firsthand knowledge of the asteroid.
Professor Dante Lauretta, the Head of Planetary Science and Cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory says everything’s gone to plan: “You’ll be real glad to know that everything went absolutely flawless”.
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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission is on its way. Once the spacecraft lands, it will use a sort of mechanical arm to scrape Bennu’s surface, which NASA idiosyncratically refers to as a Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM. Nasa estimates that there is about a one in 2,700 chance that the 500 metre wide asteroid will strike the Earth.
