NASA’s OSIRIS-REx returned to Earth last month, dropping NASA’s first asteroid sample into the Utah desert, from where it was taken to a secure NASA facility for exploration and further study. But NASA says it ran into a big problem trying to open the spacecraft: There are far more asteroid samples from Bennu than expected.

Since the spacecraft’s landing in late September, NASA has been working to open the TAGSAM (Touch and Go Sample Collection Mechanism) head, which will allow the team to access the main impactor of the Bennu asteroid sample. But it took much longer than expected.

“The biggest ‘problem’ is that it’s taking longer than we expected to collect a lot of material,” Christopher Snead, deputy chief curator for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said in a statement. said. This “problem” means NASA and other astronomers will have plenty of material to work with on asteroid Bennu.

This is good news, even if it means it will take longer to organize and secure everything. Bennu is a small near-Earth asteroid that passes by Earth every six years. In fact, the probability of hitting the Earth in 2182 is very low. Because of its relative closeness to our planet, Bennu was a perfect choice for OSIRIS-REx to travel and collect asteroid samples.

But when a NASA spacecraft landed on Bennu in 2020, we learned that the asteroid was much more fragile than expected. Instead of a bunch of small debris like rocks and dust held tightly together by the asteroid’s gravity, we found that everything was actually held together quite loosely. But OSIRIS-REx still managed to capture an intact sample of asteroid Bennu and soon began its journey home.

This slack likely played a large role in the TAGSAM collecting so much material and the material leaking out of the TAGSAM before it was fully assembled. While it might be a bit annoying to slow down the actual sampling process, NASA is more than happy to take on the challenge. Source