In October 2020,engineers set ashore a spacecraft on an asteroid200 million miles ( 320 million kilometre ) from Earth and collected a rocky sample from its surface . But that was n’t even the hardest part . Now theOSIRIS - REx spacecraft is on its way back to Earthto spend off that sample distribution , with NASA rehearsing the politic means to catch it without bankrupt the whole mission .
The spacecraft has spent seven year in quad and is now gearing up for its final , yet most challenging , task . OSIRIS - male monarch is on schedule to drop off a sampling from asteroid Bennu on September 24 during a flyby of Earth , when it will expel a capsule containing the asteroid sample . The condensation will chute its means down to Earth and body politic at the Air Force ’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert .
“ Once the sample capsule touch down , our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the rubber of a temporary uninfected room , ” Mike Moreau , deputy undertaking director at NASA ’s Goddard Space Flight Center , said in astatement . The sense of urgency here stems from veneration that the sample distribution will get spoiled by Earthly contaminants , thereby foil the entire mission .
An artist’s depiction of the asteroid samples being dropped off to Earth.Illustration: NASA
The capsule has to land within a 37 - mile by 9 - Swedish mile oval ( 59 km by 15 km ) about 13 minutes after it is released by the ballistic capsule . Teams from NASA Goddard , KinetX , Lockheed Martin , and NASA ’s Langley Research Center will be monitor weather , solar activeness , and infinite debris to make indisputable the space capsule lands safely .
This summertime , recovery teams in Utah and Colorado will be practice all the steps postulate to regain the sample , practise how to unpack and process the sample inside mitt boxes before enrapture it to the lab in Houston via helicopter , fit in to NASA . The recovery crew will also take in soil and aviation sample around the condensation ’s landing surface area to help place if any contamination come in in contact with the asteroid sample .
A different squad of scientists is preparing the investigation that will be channel on the sampling once it ’s delivered to the lab . Once the sample is experience , scientists will take out it and allocate up to a one-fourth of it to the mission ’s skill squad in different parts of the human race while the sleep will be pass out among other scientists who are not part of the mission .
Members of the mission team practicing with a mock glove box.Photo: NASA Johnson/Bill Stafford
“ There are two thing permeant on Earth : water and biota , ” Jason Dworkin , OSIRIS - king project scientist at NASA Goddard , said in the statement . “ Both can seriously alter meteorites when they land on the ground and muddle the story told by the sample ’s chemistry and mineralogy . A pristine sample could provide insights into the development of solar system . ”
This is NASA ’s first attempt at retrieving a sample from an asteroid . TheJapanese space agency ( JAXA ) ’s Hayabusa2 grabbed a small sampleof dust , pebble , and gas from the Ryugu asteroid in 2019 and deliver the asteroid sample distribution to Earth in 2020 . Arecent subject of the asteroid samplerevealed the front of two organic molecules , supporting the hypothesis that the building blocks of lifetime itself travel to Earth by thumb on asteroids that crash on our planet billions of years ago .
Analyzing the Bennu sample will provide scientists with more evidence as to how life story may have originated on Earth . “ We will do a lineal comparing of the samples from Ryugu and the sampling from asteroid Bennu when NASA ’s OSIRIS - male monarch missionary work return it to Earth , ” Dworkin say in a Februarypress release .
As OSIRIS - REx prepares for its large drop - off , recovery teams on Earth are perfecting their plan to catch the asteroid sampling and make certain it stays pristine .
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