[ad_1]
Cheers and applause at the control center of the US space agency Nasa: During a complex maneuver that lasted several hours, the “Osiris Rex” probe was the first US missile to take a sample from an asteroid on Wednesday night. It should be sent back to Earth in about three years. “The missile did everything it was supposed to do,” said Dante Lauretta, the mission’s chief scientist. “I can’t believe we did it. That is historical, that is wonderful »
Whether the sample taken was usable and sufficient will only be revealed in the next few days after “Osiris Rex” has sent more data back to Earth, Lauretta said. NASA scientists hope to obtain between 60 and 2000 grams of dust, debris and rocks.
How was the mission
The probe had temporarily left its place in the orbit of the asteroid Bennu and was only a few meters from it. Using a kind of robotic arm called a “Tagsam” (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism), it touched the surface of the asteroid for about five seconds and expelled pressurized nitrogen to agitate the sample material. After sucking up the sample, the probe moved away from Bennu again and returned to its orbit. NASA had previously successfully rehearsed the maneuver twice.
When the successful completion of the maneuver was announced at NASA’s control center in the US state of Maryland, many of the scientists, all in blue t-shirts and protective masks, jumped up, clapped and cheered. Some had tears in their eyes. “The emotions are huge,” said chief scientist Lauretta. “They are all very proud.”
NASA Chief Jim Bridenstine also congratulated: “This wonderful premiere for NASA shows how an incredible team from across the country has come together and overcome unlikely obstacles to push the limits of our knowledge.”
What scientists expect
“Osiris Rex” took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in September 2016 and arrived at Bennu about two years later. Since then, the six-meter-long, 2,100-kilogram probe (its abbreviation stands for: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) has been orbiting the asteroid and examining it with its science instruments and cameras.
The deep black Bennu, named for an ancient Egyptian deity, has a diameter of around 550 meters and could come quite close to earth in a good 150 years. Even if the risk of impact is very low, Nasa Bennu is one of the most dangerous asteroids currently known, and therefore you want to investigate it very carefully. In addition, scientists hope that the mission, which cost about a billion dollars, will provide information about the formation of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, because asteroids are remnants of it.
In 2005, the Japanese space probe “Hayabusa” landed on an asteroid. In 2010, it brought to Earth the first soil samples ever collected from such a celestial body. There have been other flights to asteroids, but so far no other probe has returned material to Earth. (SDA)
