There is a reason NASA collected a sample from an asteroid
OSIRIS-REx: A NASA Sample Return Mission to Mars to Probe Asteroid Origin and Origin of Earth’s Most Excited Fragments
A saucer-shaped capsule parachuted down gently in the Utah desert today, after a years-long journey through space. Its cargo is a precious collection of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu — the first time NASA has ever brought pieces of this type of celestial object back to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx is returning much more material from asteroid Bennu, at around 250 grams, which means that more science can be done — particularly when looking for those small amounts of trace materials. The two missions are not competitive, according to researchers.
The science capsule was slowed by parachutes and landed in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 AM ET, a landing area chosen as it is the largest restricted airspace in the United States and has been used for previous NASA sample return missions like Genesis and Stardust.
The landing area is 36 miles by 8.5 miles and it requires a high level of precision in order to rendezvous with the asteroid and collect its sample in 2020.
The OSIRIS-REx program manager stated that the team was under a meter away from their target as they prepared to land. “So that illustrates what kind of navigation precision we’ve had throughout this mission.”
It’s important to be clear that the theory is not that life itself arose elsewhere and was delivered to Earth, but rather that the basic building blocks of life — often referred to as organic compounds — could have arrived here billions of years ago carried by asteroids.
That’s been a theory for decades; but to test it out, scientists need access to asteroidal material. It is a good start to use instruments on a spaceship to visit an asteroid, but only if you have a bigger laboratory with equipment like a mile-wide particle accelerator, which would be hard to fit on a plane.
meteorites come from space and fall to the earth’s surface, which is an option for study. Most of the research done historically has used these tiny fragments as samples.
But there are two problems with this approach. Firstly, when a meteorite falls, it doesn’t have the context of where in the solar system it came from. Researchers can’t know its origin, or see what other bodies it was close to, which can give important clues to the interpretation of any data. The meteorite may have picked up matter along its way and been contaminated by the local environment when it flew through the atmosphere.
The OSIRIS-APEX Project: A New Target for Astronomy and Solar System Science: Ryugu vs. Bennu
“Not all asteroids are the same,” said Lauretta, who is also a member of the Hayabusa 2 team. Both of them look very similar, but they are very different. Ryugu is larger and more red in color, while Bennu is smaller and more blue. Scientists still aren’t sure what that difference in color means, but being able to analyze and compare the samples on Earth should help understand both how the asteroids are similar and how they differ.
When scientists want to understand how the Earth formed, they need to look beyond our planet and out into the solar system. Star systems form from enormous clouds of gas that collapse into a star at the center, spinning a disk of material around it.
“The asteroids date from about 500 million years earlier in time than the oldest rocks on Earth. Lauretta said that as a geologist he wants to go back all the way to the beginning. “And the fun thing is, when you’re looking at asteroids you go literally to the very beginning of the solar system.”
The bits of Bennu will be sent to Houston, Texas, by NASA. The curators will disassemble the container and begin to look into the chemistry and mineralogy of the pristine samples to find clues to the origins of the Solar System.
Now that the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has dropped off the capsule containing the sample, its initial job is over. Even though the spaceship is unable to collect another sample, it still has power, a propulsion system and all of its science instruments are still operating.
So rather than waste this craft, it will become OSIRIS-APEX and go on to study a new target, the asteroid Apophis. By a fortunate chance of orbital dynamics, it will be able to rendezvous with this asteroid — one of the most famous in the solar system, because it will come close to Earth in the next few years — and study it.
In 2029, Apophis is going to fly within 30,000 meters of the surface of the Earth, which is similar to the altitude our weather satellites are located at. It is the biggest, closest flyby of an asteroid for 1,000 years and can be seen from some locations on Earth.
The Osiris-Rex capsule in the desert: A journey through the desert to find a way out of the dust. The first opportunity to see it
NASA has scheduled a press conference on 11 October to unveil the first scientific results. But its work on the mission could be interrupted if the US government shuts down on 1 October. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been battling over priorities for funding the federal government in 2024. If the situation remains in a stalemate by the time the US fiscal year ends on 30 September, then federal agencies, including NASA, might close until an agreement can be reached. The sample will remain protected and safe if that were to happen while it was at NASA, says the head of NASAs planetary sciences division. “The sample waited for more than 4 billion years for humans to study it, and if it takes us a little longer, I think we’ll be okay.”
After getting the sample back to Earth, there is a lot of science research to be done.
I will be one of the first people to see the capsule as it is in position out there in the desert. The moment is going to be emotional for Lauretta. For over 12 years we have been building and testing this thing. So it’s the end of a very, very long journey, and the beginning of the next chapter.”
Workers tracked the capsule as it plummeted toward the ground and then swooped it into a helicopter and flew it away to a lab.
That canister had to make the final leg of its journey alone, because it was hotter than lava. As the Osiris-REx capsule flew, it was released as it flew close to the planet. The capsule then entered the atmosphere at a screaming 36 times the speed of sound before slowing down enough to land in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert.
“Quick Look”: Extracting 200 grams of Rocks and Dirt from Asteroid Bennu with OSIRIS-REx
After that, the plan is to store part of the sample so that future generations of scientists can also study these samples with more advanced tools — just as scientists today are still studying moon rocks that Apollo astronauts brought back so many decades ago.
A member of the ” quick look” team, who will be the first to examine the rocks, feels like a child on Christmas Eve who is too excited to sleep.
The spacecraft managed to gather 250 grams of rocks and dirt, a big cupful, with several chunks that are at least one centimetre long. It is the largest amount of material ever to be recovered from an asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had previously collected less than one milligram from the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, and 5.4 grams from the asteroid Ryugu in 2019.
The quick-look team will be able to analyse up to 100 grams in 72 hours. That initial sample will probably be made up of fine-grained material obtained from the outermost parts of the sample capsule, Thompson says. The first things to come into contact with Bennu were the grains picked up by the 24 stainless-steel contact pads on the outside of the sample container. It will probably be several weeks before the curators open the heart of the sample container and begin extracting the bulk of the material inside.
Early experiments might be able to look at how material on the surface compares to what came from deeper inside the asteroid. It’s possible that OSIRIS-REx’s robotic arm went as deep as 40 centimetres under Bennu’s surface.
