After nearly 2 years in space, a NASA spacecraft carrying an asteroid sample is about to reach Earth.
NASA is collecting and returning an asteroid sample from space for the very first time.
The rocks and soil, along with a sample of the asteroid Ryugu from Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission, may provide clues about how our solar system started.
The OSIRIS-REx mission will drop the sample of rocks and soil and continue its journey to study another asteroid rather than landing.
Teams have been practicing how to retrieve the sample on September 24, when it will drop into the Utah desert, which was originally obtained from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
It is assessed that OSIRIS-REx gathered up to 8.8 ounces, or around 1 cup, of material from Bennu.
In a statement, Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said, “This successful drop test ensures we’re ready.” “We are now just weeks away from receiving a piece of solar system history on Earth.” Perfect material from space rock Bennu will assist with revealing insight into the arrangement of our planetary group 4.5 quite a while back, and maybe even on how life on Earth started.”
It doesn’t happen very often that a spacecraft launches a capsule above the planet with the intention of safely transporting a unique sample of an asteroid to a specific landing site.
Long periods of difficult work by great many individuals have prompted the second when the Bennu test shows up on The planet.
Teams practiced recovering the sample capsule and ran through all possible outcomes, both positive and negative, prior to reentry day in the spring and summer.
The initial objective of the mission was to obtain a flawless asteroid sample. Be that as it may, on the off chance that the container crash-terrains and opens up, the example could become defiled.
“I’m massively pleased with the endeavors our group has filled this undertaking,” said Dante Lauretta, head specialist for OSIRIS-REx at the College of Arizona in Tucson, in a proclamation. ” We have honed our skills for sample recovery in the same way that our meticulous planning and practice helped us get ready to collect a sample from Bennu.
The first return mission for an asteroid sample is OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer. The journey of the spacecraft has lasted seven years. After launching in 2016, OSIRIS-REx entered Bennu’s orbit in 2018, collected the sample in 2020, and embarked on its extended return journey to Earth in May 2021.
Since leaving Bennu, the space apparatus has orbited the sun two times so it tends to be on the right direction to meet with Earth.
The mission team sent a series of maneuvers to the spacecraft in July to help it find a place outside of Salt Lake City where the capsule could land at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.
NASA will provide a live stream of the sample’s arrival on Earth on September 24. The live stream will start at 10 a.m. ET, and the container containing the example will enter Earth’s environment at 10:42 a.m. ET, going around 27,650 miles each hour (44,498 kilometers each hour).
Four hours before the container’s air passage, the mission group will choose whether to send an order to the rocket to deliver the case, said Rich Consumes, OSIRIS-REx project director at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The decision is based on the trajectory of the spacecraft, which determines the capsule’s ability to survive the angle, the temperature of reentry, the accuracy of the landing, and the safety of humans within the landing zone. Burns stated that the point at which OSIRIS-REx will be 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth and heading for an area that spans 250 square miles (647.5 kilometers) is when the capsule will be released. According to Burns, this will be “the equivalent of throwing a dart across the length of a basketball court and hitting the bull’s-eye.”
Burns stated that OSIRIS-REx will conduct a divert maneuver once the capsule is released, putting it on a course around the sun and aiming for Apophis, another asteroid, in 2029 for a rendezvous.
The capsule will be enveloped by a superhot ball of fire when it enters Earth’s atmosphere, but the sample inside will be protected by the container’s heat shield.
Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations, and help recover the capsule, stated that parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule down for a gentle touchdown at 11 miles per hour (17.7 kilometers per hour). Recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so.
13 minutes after the capsule enters the atmosphere of Earth, landing is anticipated.
The sample will be transported to a temporary cleanroom at the range in June by helicopter in a cargo net. The sample container will be prepared there by a team before being flown on a C-17 aircraft on September 25 to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. On October 11, a NASA broadcast hosted by Johnson will provide the public with information regarding the sample.
Training in the desert, according to Freund, NASA and Lockheed Martin Space teams have practiced every possible step in preparation for delivery day.
A sample capsule was recently dropped, collected, and prepared for transport by the team using an airplane.
It also dealt with difficult scenarios from the command center, such as what to do in the event of a reboot, how to get the spacecraft out of safe mode, and how to move communications between centers in the event of network outages.
The group has likewise arranged for various landing situations, for example, a hard landing where the container containing the example opens startlingly. After that, the team would determine if any of the sample could be saved.
According to Burns, there is also the possibility that the spacecraft will not be able to release the sample on September 24 if landing within range is impractical. In that situation, the example would stay ready, and the space apparatus’ circle would bring the case back by Earth to endeavor one more delivery over Utah in 2025.
The Johnson Space Center has a long history of storing, handling, and analyzing extraterrestrial materials, such as Apollo lunar samples. NASA has dealt with making an exceptional office at Johnson for the Bennu test for a really long time, said Kevin Righter, OSIRIS-REx representative curation lead.
As scientists examine the rocks and soil over the next two years, the dedicated cleanroom will keep any potential cross-contamination with other collections out of the equation. Christopher Snead, OSIRIS-REx deputy curator at Johnson and lead for small-particle handling, says that some of the material will be smaller than a grain of sand.
“We have been developing custom tools to carefully handle these precious particles within our new gloveboxes,” Snead said in a statement, referring to the boxes for managing hazardous or extraterrestrial material.
The example will uncover data about the arrangement and history of our planetary group as well as the job of space rocks in creating livable planets like Earth. Bennu and other asteroids are thought to have delivered elements like water to Earth early in their formation.
The sample will be divided up and sent to laboratories all over the world, including the Canadian Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, which are OSIRIS-REx mission partners. Around 70% of the example will stay flawless away so people in the future with better innovation can learn considerably more than whatever’s presently conceivable.
“The asteroids that we have in our solar system today are left over from the earliest stage of solar system history,” Lauretta said. “We’re literally looking at geologic materials that formed before the Earth even existed. I call these the grandfather rocks, the ones that really represent our origins and where we came from. This is a gift to the world.”