NASA shows us a short video of how the space probe collected samples from the dangerous asteroid Bennu 320 million kilometers from Earth and with a travel speed of more than 100,000 kilometers per hour.
The operation was delicate but the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed at the Nightingale collection site on the asteroid Bennu, one meter from its target, and bounced safely again after just 6 seconds of contact.
During this time, the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm collected a sample of dust and rock from the asteroid for further study on Earth.
The images the probe took are slowly reaching Earth. Consider that the SamCam imager took a photo every 1.25 seconds. The video that we will see below is composed of 82 photos , covering a period of five minutes from an altitude of about 25 meters through landing to when the spacecraft fires its thrusters to bounce at an altitude of 13 meters.
Samples are invaluable
Asteroids like Bennu are believed to remain relatively unchanged since their formation in the early days of the solar system, hence all the material recovered by OSIRIS-REx opens a door for us to the pristine chemistry of the dust cloud that gave rise to the Sun and planets, with which we will try to answer ancient questions such as: Where do we come from? Are we alone in the universe?.
If the collection of samples was not satisfactory (that hardly had collected anything) the probe could make a new attempt next January 2021.
NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
