Osiris-Rex has not been the highest-profile space probe in recent memory; That title will likely belong to missions like NASA’s First Private Spaceflight with SpaceX, or India’s Chandrayaan-2 by ISRO. Yet in the fairly quiet quadrants of space, some 330 million kilometers from Earth, Osiris-Rex has accomplished a very important feat: understanding the origin of our solar system and returning with the largest chunk of space rock there is. existed. mankind will have collected from the legendary Apollo lunar missions.
This feat saw its historic moment earlier today, when NASA’s Osiris-Rex space probe “ kissed ” the surface of the asteroid Bennu, fired at a patch of rock on the asteroid, collected space rock samples, and flew off. I return to re-enter its surface. designated orbit. While the data download link is currently up and running, and in the next few hours we expect to see much more detailed images and hard data on what Osiris-Rex has managed to collect, the movement launched a new chapter in the very reason. basic. behind our space missions: who are we and how did we get here?
Preliminary data shows that today’s sample collection event went according to plan. More details will come once all the event data is connected to Earth. Thank you all for following us as we travel #ToBennuAndBack! Next stop: Earth 2023! 🌍 pic.twitter.com/fP7xdOEeOs
– OSIRIS-REx from NASA (@OSIRISREx) October 20, 2020
The importance of the touchdown
Bennu, it seems, has been a surprisingly convenient asteroid. Not only was it relatively close to us, but scientific research has shown that Bennu was likely born within the first 10 million years of the formation of the solar system. As a result, it has likely remained undisturbed for about 4.5 billion years, and as a result, Bennu’s surface is believed to still retain most of the conditions that prevailed when the planets, including our Earth, were formed. In essence, what Bennu is to us is a time capsule, which has conveniently preserved the chemical structure of the universe in its formative years.
If the Osiris-Rex touchdown-and-go (TAG) maneuver went according to expectations, as announced by the Lockheed Martin Control Center in Colorado, USA, then the probe will have collected not only most of the space particles since the legendary Apollo. Missions You have collected particle samples that can help us understand what led to the formation of our planet, in turn obtaining better explanations of how our planet has evolved over time. This data can then be used to refine our search for life outside of Earth and better identify potential planets that may already harbor life or show signs that hint at the possibility of life in the past or future.
Osiris-Rex is scheduled to return home in 2023, with a payload of space rocks weighing at least 60 grams, tiny in mass, but massive in weight. As the NASA administrator rightly put it after the probe’s landing at Bennu today, once Osiris-Rex is back, it will have brought us forage that will be studied by generations of scientists to come. After all, the lunar particles brought back to Earth on the Apollo missions are still being opened up and studied.
.
