On May 10, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft will depart from the nearest planet, Bennu, and begin a nearly three-year journey to Earth, NASA officials announced this week.
The spacecraft, formally known as Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, has a large sample collected from the surface of asteroids in October-October. The goal of the mission was to collect 60 grams or 2 s of material – and although scientists are not sure until they open it, the collection event appears to have surpassed this goal. Regolith is a layer of dust and broken rocks on the surface of asteroids and planets.
Samples of asteroids will shed more light on the formation of the solar system and how water-like elements can be delivered to early Earth from the effects of this rocky rest.
When OSIRIS-REx launches Bennu in May, it will embark on a journey of 200 million miles to Earth. It is expected to deliver the sample to Earth on September 24, 2023.
The spacecraft first arrived in 2018 for a closer look at Bennu and has been orbiting the planet ever since. And let’s take a look at the asteroids before parting with his lone companion in space for the past few years.
In April, the spacecraft will make a final flyby of the asteroid to see how the sample could change the storage location from the spacecraft’s contact with the surface of Bennu.
Originally, OSIRIS-Rex was scheduled to depart from Bennu in March.
Michael Moreau, deputy project manager for OSIRIS-Rex at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, said leaving Bennu in May puts us in a ‘sweet spot’, while the departure maneuver will take the spacecraft’s onboard fuel to a minimum. Maryland, in a statement.
“Nevertheless, this will be the largest indicator maneuver by OSIRIS-REX since Bennu arrived in October 2018, with 3,593 miles (555 meters per second) in hours of velocity change.”
Flyby was not part of the mission in early April, so the May departure allows more time for this last appearance.
If everything goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will fly two miles away, to a sample site called Nightingale.
When a sample collection on the spacecraft’s arm landed on the asteroid’s surface in October, it actually sank about 1.6 feet below the material sitting on the planet. This was called a TAG, or Touch and Go, event.
The spacecraft also fired its thrusters to safely return from the planet.
Both of these events probably kicked the material off the surface of the asteroid and changed the look of the nightingale site.
This flyby would be similar to observations like Bennu-operated OSIRIS-Rex for about a year, before the mission team decided on the right place to land and collect samples.
The spacecraft will observe the complete rotation of Bennu, including its northern and southern hemispheres and the equator, and the images can be compared with images collected in 2019.
The flyby also serves as a good test for scientific equipment on OSIRIS-Rex, which may be dusted during sample collection. This goal of the spacecraft could be an outside future if everything is working properly because it will leave a pattern on Earth, not back to Earth.
Once Osiris-Rex approaches Earth in 2023, it will hit a patterned capsule, which will parachute through the Earth’s atmosphere into the Utah Desert.
A team will be ready to collect samples from the hangar of the aircraft, which serves as a temporary clean room. The samples will then be taken to labs currently under construction at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“OSIRIS-Rex has already provided incredible science,” Lori Glaze, NASA’s director of planetary science, said in a statement. “We’re really excited about the mission asteroid Bennu’s one more observation flyby is planning how the asteroid responded to TAG and provided new information to give a proper farewell.”
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