NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returns to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of the asteroid Bennu. When the sample capsule parachutes into the Utah desert on September 24, OSIRIS-REx will be the first mission in US history to send an asteroid sample back to Earth. After seven years in space, including landing on Bennu to collect dust and rocks, this daring mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: delivering an asteroid sample while protecting Earth from heat, vibration and terrestrial impacts. pollution.

“Once the sample capsule touches the ground, our team will race against time to recover it and deliver it to a safe, temporary clean room,” said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Therefore, over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will implement and perfect the procedures needed to recover the sample in Utah and transport it to a new laboratory built for the material at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the worldwide OSIRIS-REx science team for analysis, and the remainder will be selected for review by other scientists now and for generations to come.

Flight dynamics engineers at NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are reviewing the trajectory that will bring the spacecraft closer to Earth. At Lockheed Martin in Denver, team members monitor the spacecraft and prepare a team to retrieve the sample capsule. This summer, teams in Colorado and Utah will take all steps to safely retrieve the capsule while protecting it from contamination. A team of curators at the Johnson Space Center rehearses the procedure for unpacking and processing a sample in a glove box. Meanwhile, members of the specimen science team are preparing their work with the specimen material they have received.

A Bennu asteroid sample capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will parachute into the Utah desert on September 24, 2023. Image credit: NASA

“The OSIRIS-REx team has already done a great job identifying and sampling the asteroid Bennu,” said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “These achievements are a direct result of the intense training and rehearsals we do every step of the way. We bring that level of discipline and commitment to this final phase of flight.”

Asteroids are ancient materials from the primeval age of planet formation and may contain molecular precursors of life. Scientists have learned a lot by studying the fragments of asteroids that naturally reach Earth as meteorites. But to understand whether asteroids played a role in delivering these compounds to the Earth’s surface more than 4 billion years ago, scientists need a pristine sample from space free of terrestrial pollutants.

Also, the most fragile rocks observed at Bennu likely would not have survived as meteorites passed through Earth’s atmosphere. OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard, Dr. “Two things are common in the world: water and biology,” said Jason Dworkin. “Both can severely alter meteorites when they hit the ground and confuse the story that the sample’s chemistry and mineralogy tell. An intact sample can provide insight into the evolution of the Solar System.”

Members of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx curatorial team practice with a glove box mock-up at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The curator team will be among the first to see and process the OSIRIS-REx sample returning from the asteroid Bennu. They are also responsible for storing the sample and distributing it to scientific team members around the world. A large part of the sample will be preserved for future generations. Image credit: NASA Johnson/Bill Stafford

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft passes by Earth on September 24, it will release its sample return capsule, completing its primary mission. The capsule, which is estimated to contain about one cup of Bennu material – exactly 8.8 ounces +/- 3.6 ounces (250 grams +/- 101 grams) – will descend into an ellipse measuring 37 miles by 9 miles (59 km). . 15 km) within the Department of Defense area, which is part of the Utah Test and Training Area and Dugway Field.

NASA Goddard, KinetX, Lockheed Martin, and OSIRIS-REx team members from the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia are testing their navigation plans under various scenarios of weather, solar activity, and space debris to ensure when the capsule will enter Earth. uses computer models to At 10:41 am ET (8:41 am Kyiv time), the atmosphere will touch the target area 13 minutes later.

Towing crews are responsible for securing the capsule’s landing site to return samples and sending the capsule by helicopter to a portable clean room located at the test site. In addition, crews will take soil and air samples from around the landing pod. These samples will help determine if any of the smallest contaminants have come into contact with the asteroid sample.

Once the capsule is inside the portable clean room building, team members will remove the heat shield, back shell, and other components to prepare the sample box for transport to Houston.

The return of samples from the asteroid Bennu to Earth will be the culmination of more than 12 years of effort by NASA and its mission partners, but it also marks the beginning of a new phase of exploration as scientists around the world turn their attention to analysis. of this unique and precious material that dates back to the early formation of our solar system.