The robotic deep space probe Origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification, security and regolith explorer, better known as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, has already made its way back from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
On May 10, 2021, the spacecraft began its 2.5-year journey to Earth laden with rock and dust samples when its four main engines fired for seven minutes to reach a relative speed of 1,000 km / h.
OSIRIS-REx was the first NASA mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, study the surface, and collect a sample for delivery to Earth.
Samples are on the way home
The spacecraft is carrying at least 60 grams of soil from the surface of the asteroid Bennu, a rock the size of the US Empire State Building located 320 million kilometers between the orbit of Earth and Mars , which NASA expects us to Please provide clues about how our solar system formed. If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will orbit the Sun twice and return its samples to Earth on September 24, 2023 after surviving re-entry and parachuting to the recovery area at the Utah Test and Training Range in the western desert of this western United States state, famous for its great deserts.
As planned, only the sample return capsule carrying rocks and dust collected from Bennu will reach Earth. When OSIRIS-REx makes its final approach, it will drop the capsule, which will continue with its own momentum. Meanwhile, the mothership will enter a heliocentric trajectory within the orbit of Venus.
Meanwhile, NASA will track the spacecraft using the agency’s Deep Space Network and make the required heading corrections on its way to Earth. “We need to make regular corrections to bring the trajectory closer and closer to the Earth’s atmosphere for the release of the sample, and to take into account the small errors that could have accumulated since the last recording”, clarifies Peter Antreasian, leader of navigation OSIRIS-REx at KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California.
The May 10 departure date was specifically chosen because it coincided with the asteroid Bennu’s closest alignment to Earth as it travels through our solar system.
Investigating the early years of our solar system
The OSIRIS-REx mission was launched in 2016 with the goal of holding onto Bennu to collect samples that could help the scientific community discover more about the early days of our solar system. It conducted its landmark rock sampling in October 2020, dodging building-sized rocks to collect pieces from the surface for several seconds before safely backing away.
“We have a vital piece of our solar system returning to Earth, where many generations of researchers can uncover its secrets, ” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters.
Asteroids like Bennu are essentially remnants of the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that their chemical makeup acts as a window into the more distant past as they are remnants of the early solar system. Hence, the collection of pebble and dust samples could help reveal vital clues about how life formed in the early solar system.
The rocks and dust from Bennu will be housed in a new laboratory under construction at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which houses hundreds of kilos of lunar material collected by the 12 moonwalkers from the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972. The NASA will reserve 75% of the samples for future generations to study with technologies not yet created by man.
Reference: NASA
