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.
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During a dress rehearsal in April, the spacecraft sampled hands on a target sample site, known as the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism. NASA
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 approached the spacecraft’s robotic sampling arm on a bannu called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TGS Gasum). 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. .
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The team’s goal is to collect about 60 grams of dust, dirt and gravel from the surface of Bennu. To determine if that goal has been achieved, Osiris-Rex will maneuver toward a safe distance in the next few hours and then move his hand to the position of taking photos of the collector’s head and weigh how much mass there is.
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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 the boulder or touches an uneven surface at some strange angle, for example. If that proves to be the case, we’ll find out on Wednesday and prepare a second attempt at one of the Osiris-Rex backup sites. The spacecraft is equipped with three bottles of nitrogen gas, so the team should get at least two more shots in the sample.
AS NASA
If Osiris-Rex succeeds, he will join Japan’s Haibusa and Hibusa-2 mission In the years of asteroid exploration. Hibusa took a small portion of the asteroid Itokawa and returned it, and Hibusa 2 is in the process of returning a significant specimen of the space rock Ryugu.
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.
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