For the primary time, NASA has returned some mud and different bits of an asteroid collected in house to Earth for research.
Items of a giant asteroid named Bennu have been jarred free and picked up practically three years in the past by NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft, which launched over seven years in the past from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
On Sunday morning, the spacecraft launched a capsule that landed a bit of over 4 hours later, at 9:52 a.m. PT, within the Division of Protection’s Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary. Inside 20 minutes, scientists, engineers and army personnel arrived by helicopter to examine and safe the capsule, which was transported to a close-by cleanroom. Will probably be moved to Johnson Area Heart in Houston on Monday.
“Whereas this will really feel like the tip of an unimaginable chapter, it is actually just the start of one other,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for Osiris-Rex primarily based on the College of Arizona, stated in an announcement. “We now have the unprecedented alternative to research these samples and delve deeper into the secrets and techniques of our photo voltaic system.”
In 2020, the van-size spacecraft carried out a “contact and go” maneuver — kind of like a chest bump in house — and swiped just a few ounces of fabric from the house rock, which is mostly a pile of rubble held collectively by its personal gravity. Osiris-Rex lingered round Bennu till 2021, when it began its two-year journey again to Earth.
This graphic reveals the occasions that occur between the time the Osiris-Rex spacecraft releases its pattern capsule to the time the capsule lands within the Utah desert.
Since launching on Sept. 8, 2016, Osiris-Rex has traveled billions of miles to Bennu and again. It’s the first such mission led by NASA. Japan’s house company despatched two spacecraft, named Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2, to gather and ship samples from asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, respectively.
In Houston, the pattern will endure preliminary evaluation and be unveiled on Oct. 11 in a livestreamed information convention. It is hoped the pattern will present scientists with a window into the start of the photo voltaic system, together with the solar and planets, some 4.5 billion years in the past.
As for the principle spacecraft, it is not accomplished. After sending its treasure to the floor, Osiris-Rex fired its engines to keep away from smashing into the environment. It’s going to now proceed on to its subsequent goal, the asteroid Apophis, underneath the brand new moniker Osiris-Apex (Osiris-Apophis Explorer). The car is not outfitted to gather and ship one other pattern, however it might attempt to blast the asteroid with its fuel thrusters in an try and dislodge mud and different small bits for research.
Apophis is a crucial goal as a result of it is thought-about a doubtlessly hazardous asteroid. Whereas any probability of it impacting Earth within the subsequent century has been dominated out, it is going to be value conserving an in depth eye on for hundreds of years to come back.
