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In the darkness and cold of deep space today, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin descended to the surface of an asteroid and touched it with its robotic arm to collect a sample of its rocky material. Although brief, the Touch-And-Go event, or TAG, took years to come to fruition.
A planetary remnant, the asteroid Bennu, is as tall as the Empire State Building and contains pristine material from the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, potentially including the organic molecular precursors of life on Earth.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) successfully touched the surface of the asteroid and fired one of its canisters of nitrogen gas to agitate and collect material from the surface to through a filter in the round sampling head. Then seconds later, the spacecraft slowly backed away from the asteroid and continues to move away until the sample is evaluated.
“Our nation has explored the solar system and landed in multiple bodies, but this is the first time we’ve tried to collect a sample from an asteroid. Although Bennu has posed many challenges, the team made it look easy today,” Lisa said. Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin. “Although there is more to do before we are fully successful, the TAG event went according to plan and I couldn’t be more proud of the team.”
Using multiple techniques, the team will now take a few days to determine how much material, if any, was collected. The mission’s goal is to collect at least 60 grams, roughly the size of a chocolate bar, of regolith and potentially collect up to 2 kilograms.
The spacecraft mission operations, including today’s TAG collection event, were held at the Lockheed Martin Space facility near Denver. The flight team has been operating the spacecraft since the launch in September 2016 and the operation around Bennu in December 2018.
Today’s TAG maneuver is the first time NASA has attempted to collect material from an asteroid. OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s third robotic sample return mission, and Lockheed Martin has built and operated all three spacecraft.
If the proper amount of material was collected, the team will store the TAGSAM head, with the material inside, in a sample return capsule. The spacecraft will depart Bennu in March 2021 and return the capsule and sample to Earth on September 24, 2023.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt provides general mission management, systems engineering, and mission and safety assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the planning of the mission’s scientific observation and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and is currently providing spacecraft operations. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission of NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
