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Artist’s conception of NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu.
NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona
NASA Osiris-Rex spacecraft it will briefly land on a large asteroid on Tuesday and pick up some rocks and dust from its surface to be returned to Earth for study. The event marks an important first for NASA and a potential boon for science, space exploration, and our understanding of the solar system. Lockheed Martin Space will stream the daring mission live on Tuesday and we’ve got everything you need to know about the mission and how to watch it right here.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu’s touch-and-go (TAG) sample collection is scheduled to drop on Tuesday, October 20 at around 3:12 p.m. Pacific time. NASA will broadcast the TAG maneuver live on NASA TV and the agency’s website beginning at 2 p.m. PT on Tuesday. You can find the live streaming link below.
When did the mission start?
Osiris-Rex as a concept has been around since at least 2004, when a team of astronomers first proposed the idea to NASA. After more than a decade of development, the spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 8, 2016, on an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The spacecraft spent the next 26 months navigating to Bennu, officially arriving on December 3, 2018.
Since then, the mission team has spent nearly two years orbiting the diamond-shaped space rock, examining and mapping its surface to select the best sampling location. In recent months, trials have started before the next sample collection attempt, and now the team says they are ready to play TAG with Bennu.
Why Bennu?
Bennu is what’s called a “debris pile” asteroid, meaning it formed in the deep cosmic past when gravity slowly brought the remains of an ancient collision together. The result is a top-shaped body with a diameter of about a third of a mile (500 meters) and a surface strewn with large rocks and boulders.
Bennu is believed to be a window into the solar system’s past – a pristine carbon-rich body that carries the building blocks of the planets and life. Some of these resources, such as water and metals, might also be worth exploiting at some point in the future for use on Earth or in space exploration.
The asteroid has another characteristic that makes it particularly interesting for scientists and humans in general: it has the possibility of impacting the Earth in the distant future. On NASA’s list of impact risks, Bennu is ranked # 2. Current data shows dozens of potential impacts in the last quarter of the 22nd century, although all have only a slim chance of being met.
How will TAG work?
For anyone who has ever dabbled in robots or even participated in a robotics competition, the Osiris-Rex mission would appear to be the ultimate culmination of a young robotist’s dreams. The “touch and go” sampling procedure is a complex and high-risk task that has been building at a key moment for years. If successful, it will play a role in history and our future in space.
The basic plan is for Osiris-Rex to land on Bennu on a rocky landing site called Nightingale. The pickup-sized spaceship will need to negotiate building-sized rocks around the landing area to land in a relatively clear space that is as large as a few parking spaces. However, a robotic sampling arm will be the only part of Osiris-Rex that will actually land on the surface. One of the three canisters of pressurized nitrogen will fire to remove a sample of dust and small rocks that can then be trapped in the arm’s collection head for storage and return to Earth.
The descent to the surface of Bennu will take approximately four hours, roughly the time it takes for the asteroid to make one complete revolution. After this slow approach, the actual TAG sample collection procedure takes notably less than 16 seconds.
Preparation for TAG has not gone exactly as planned. Mission organizers initially expected the Bennu surface to have many potential landing sites covered primarily with fine materials comparable to sand or gravel. It turns out that Bennu’s surface is extremely rugged and it doesn’t have any really cozy landing spots.
After spending much of the past two years re-evaluating the mission, the team decided to try “threading the needle” through the rock-filled landscape at Nightingale and a couple of other backup sample sites. It is still possible that the surface is too rocky to get a good sample. If this turns out to be the case, the team may choose to try again at a different site. Osiris-Rex is equipped with three nitrogen canisters to fire and disrupt the surface, meaning the team has up to three attempts to catch a sample.
And that?
Immediately after collecting his sample, Osiris-Rex will fire his thrusters to get away from Bennu. The spacecraft will continue to hover above Bennu for the remainder of 2020 before finally making an exit maneuver next year and beginning a two-year journey back to Earth.
On September 24, 2023, Osiris-Rex is scheduled to dispose of its sample return capsule, which will land in the Utah desert and be retrieved for study.
Hasn’t this been done before?
Yes. The Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft successfully returned small grains from asteroid 25143 Itokawa to Earth in 2010. Its successor, Hayabusa-2, successfully fired a special copper bullet at the large asteroid Ryugu in 2019 and then recovered some of the shrapnel. That sample is currently on its way back to Earth.
How can I watch?
Follow NASA’s live broadcast, which begins Tuesday at 2pm PT. You can also follow the Osiris-Rex Twitter Feed for the latest updates.
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