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It has been a Touch-And-Go (TAG) success for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that yesterday unfolded its robotic arm and briefly touched the asteroid Bennu to collect dust and pebbles from its surface.
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is an international sample return mission led by NASA and joined by members of the scientific team from Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom. Kingdom and Italy.
Your goal is to take a small piece of material from a well-preserved ancient asteroid that is currently more than 321 million kilometers (200 million miles) from Earth and return it to scientists for analysis.
Yesterday, OSIRIS-REx accomplished the first part of this incredible feat by swooping close to the asteroid’s surface after several key thruster burns were performed to maneuver the spacecraft into position.
The descent began around 5:50 p.m. GMT (1:50 p.m. EDT) and took about four hours, during which time the spacecraft extended its 3.35-meter (11-foot) sampling arm, known as the Acquisition Mechanism. Touch-and-Go Sampler (TAGSAM), in preparation for acquiring the sample from a collection site known as “Nightingale.”
Nightingale is a moderately transparent patch of rock about 16 meters in diameter, and was chosen for its relative ease of landing and the amount and value of material available to collect.
It is one of the few clear regions of this early asteroid unexpectedly covered in rocks; one of which is the size of a two-story building and is called “Mount Doom.”
Once on site, TAGSAM, the only portion of OSIRIS-REx that actually made contact with Bennu’s surface, fired a blast of nitrogen gas to dislodge the fine material on the surface, trapping that material within the device.
“It is difficult to put into words how exciting it was to receive confirmation that the spacecraft successfully touched the surface and fired one of the gas cylinders,” said Michael Moreau, deputy director of the OSIRIS-REx project at the Goddard Space Flight Center. from NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland. .
A total of 60 grams (2 oz) of asteroid material is expected to be collected, although TAGSAM could collect up to two kilograms.
At 21:53 GMT (17:53 EDT), the daring TAG portion of the spacecraft’s mission was over and OSIRIS-Rex fired its thrusters to get away from Bennu safely.
After more than a decade of planning, “the TAG event has run as expected,” NASA said triumphantly, adding that the OSIRIS-REx team will take about a week to confirm how much sample the spacecraft collected.
“Although we have some work ahead of us to determine the outcome of the event, the successful contact, the TAGSAM gas firing and Bennu’s withdrawal are important achievements for the team,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
If the sampling effort did not reach its goal of 60 grams or, in fact, got nothing at all, the mission has the ability to make a second sampling attempt. It is likely to be at a backup site, called “Osprey,” which is another relatively rock-free area within a crater near Bennu’s equator.
“Our first indication of whether we were successful in collecting a sample will come on October 21 when we download the throwback film of the spacecraft,” Moreau said. “If TAG caused a significant disturbance to the surface, we probably collected a lot of material.”
If the team is confident that enough sample was collected, we will make the decision to save the material on October 30, said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at Goddard.
The sample will be stored in the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) by the robotic arm and preparations will be made for the spacecraft to leave Bennu in March 2021; This is the next time Bennu will properly align itself with Earth to achieve the greatest fuel economy return flight.
The sample is expected to reach Earth on September 24, 2023, after parachuting into the western Utah desert, where scientists will be waiting to collect it.
“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,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA. agency headquarters in Washington. “We can’t wait to see what comes next.”
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