Historic: NASA successfully completes its mission to rip a piece out of an asteroid to bring it back to Earth

This afternoon in Chile, NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission, after a long journey of four years, managed to descend to the rocky surface of the asteroid Bennu to collect samples of dust and pebbles and bring them back to Earth, in a complex operation performed 320 million kilometers from Earth.

While last year, Japan managed with his Hayabusa2 probe to collect some dust from another asteroid, Ryugu, Osiris-Rex will collect a much larger sample, of at least 60 grams, which he hopes can reveal the original components of the Solar System.

The spacecraft, the size of a large truck, attacked the surface of Bennu, 490 meters in diameter, shortly before 7:00 p.m. in Chile, in a surgical operation that, due to the distance, cannot be performed in real time, since any delay signal just under 20 seconds to reach your destination.

According to NASA, Bennu was chosen because it is conveniently close and because of its age: scientists calculate that It was formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s history, 4.5 billion years ago.

After Osiris-Rex reached the rock at the end of 2018, scientists were surprised to receive photographs showing that it was covered in pebbles and boulders, sometimes made of 30 meters high.

Since then, they have mapped the asteroid at centimeter resolution and chose the least risky landing site: it’s called Nightingale Crater, 25 meters wide, with a target area of eight meters in diameter ready for the approach.

The operation was divided into several highly complex phases. First, fire your thrusters to line up with the correct side of the asteroid at a distance of only 100 meters, a second maneuver rotated the probe toward the surface to descend to 50 meters. And the last one, to 10 centimeters per second. Then, five meters above the ground, an on-board automatic system was able to cancel the operation if it detected too large rocks at the point of contact. This was carried out around 7:15 p.m. in Chile, and the collection was done as planned, thanks to a three-meter robotic arm. It should be noted that the craft did not land on the surface, but only “grazed” it, and the arm did all the work.

As explained by NASA, the data indicates that the surface was successfully contacted and shot a blast of nitrogen gas. The gas should have raised dust and pebbles on the surface of Bennu, to be captured in the sample collection head. OSIRIS-REx engineers also confirmed that shortly after the spacecraft made contact with the surface, He ignited his thrusters and drove safely away.

“This amazing first for NASA demonstrates how an incredible team from across the country came together and persevered through incredible challenges to push the boundaries of knowledge,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Our industrial, academic and international partners have made it possible to get our hands on a piece of the oldest Solar System.”

“It was an incredible feat, and today we have advanced both science and engineering and our prospects for future missions to study these mysterious ancient narrators of the solar system,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Directorate of Scientific Missions of NASA. “A piece of primordial rock that has witnessed the entire history of our solar system may now be ready to return home for generations of scientific discoveries, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.”

“After more than a decade of planning, the team is delighted with the success of today’s sampling attempt,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Although we have some work ahead of us to determine the outcome of the event, the successful contact, the TAGSAM gas firing, and the withdrawal of Bennu are important achievements for the team. I hope to analyze the data to determine the mass of sample collected. “

In the next few hours, the data collected by the probe will be sent to Earth, evaluating in a week if you show them are enough to give the mission as completely finished. If so, the spacecraft will begin its journey back to Earth in March 2021. Otherwise, they will prepare for another attempt on 12th of January.

As for the arrivals of the ships, the Japanese probe Hayabusa2 will arrive on Earth on December 6 next, while the NASA spacecraft will do so in September 2023.