NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands on the planet Bennu

Four years After launching from Earth, NASA’s Osiris-Rex made a historic landing and short landing on a potentially dangerous asteroid Bennu 200 million miles away on Tuesday.

The spacecraft made all these trips to make a short touch-go-maneuver with the goal of collecting samples from the surface of the asteroid and transporting it to Earth for study.

We won’t know until Wednesday whether Osiris-Rex space science has succeeded in capturing the souvenir, but on Tuesday NASA TV reported a spacecraft’s robotic sampling arm called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TGS Gasum), which successfully went down on Benu. . For about 15 seconds. During the short contact, he did just how much of a cosmic pickup maneuver.

The spacecraft, which operates largely autonomously due to an 18-minute communication delay in mission control on Earth, fired a can of gas through the tagsum, which would have disrupted the surface of the bean enough for the sample to reach the collector’s head in his hand. .

The team’s goal is to collect about 60 grams of dust, dirt and gravel from the surface of Bennu. To determine if the goal has been achieved, Osiris-Rex will move his arm in position to take photos of the head of the exercise in the next few hours and weigh how much mass there is.

There is no guarantee that Osiris-Rex has collected significant specimens. As the spacecraft approached and then orbited and surveyed Bennu for two years, it became clear that this small world was different from what scientists expected. The team hoped to find a number of sandy surfaces for sampling, but it turned out that Bennu is a waste ile glow, with hard stones.

The Osiris-Rex was built to touch a flat, even surface, but Bennu is too rocky, the team can’t find the right place. Fortunately, Oxiris-Rex seems to be advancing its design when it comes to the researcher with precision. This gave the team the confidence to try its sample maneuver on a site called Nightingale, which is only as large as a few spaces.

Looking at the landscape, there are many things that can go wrong if Osiris-Rex clips a boulder or touches an uneven surface at an odd angle, for example. If that proves to be the case, we’ll find out on Wednesday and start preparing for another attempt at one of the Osiris-Rex backup sites. The spacecraft is equipped with three nitrogen gas bottles, so the team should get at least two more shots in a successful sample.

If Osiris-Rex succeeds, he will join Japan’s Haibusa and Hibusa-2 mission In the years of asteroid exploration. Hibusa successfully sampled and returned a small material from the asteroids Itokawa and Hibusa 2, the spacecraft is in the process of returning a significant sample of Rayuga.

If the mission collects a sample, it will embark on a long journey back to Earth, with a planned landing in the Utah Desert in September, 2023.