How NASA prepared to collect a sample from the asteroid that landed in the desert

Editor’s note: Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news of fascinating discoveries, scientific advances and more.

CNN
—

An asteroid sample stored inside a NASA spacecraft is about to reach Earth next Traveling for about two and a half years through space.

It is the first time NASA has collected and returned an asteroid sample from space.

along with A sample was previously returned from the asteroid Ryugu Through Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission, rocks and soil can reveal information about the beginning of our solar system.

Instead of landing, the OSIRIS-REx mission will drop a rock and soil sample and continue on its journey to study another asteroid.

Teams are practicing how to retrieve the sample, originally collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, when it falls in the Utah desert on September 24.

It is estimated that OSIRIS-REx collected up to 8.8 ounces, or about one cup, of material from Bennu.

“We are now just weeks away from receiving a piece of solar system history on Earth, and this successful drop test ensures we are ready,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “Authentic material from asteroid Bennu will help shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps even on how life began on Earth.”

It’s not every day that a spacecraft launches a capsule carrying a rare asteroid sample above the planet and intends to deliver it safely to a designated landing site.

Years of hard work by thousands of people led to the moment the Bennu sample reached Earth.

Over the spring and summer, teams practiced sample capsule recovery and reviewed all the scenarios, good and bad, that could happen on return day.

The original goal of the mission was to retrieve an original sample from the asteroid. But if the capsule breaks open, the sample may become contaminated.

“I am extremely proud of the efforts our team has put into this endeavor,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement. “Just as our careful planning and training helped us collect a sample from Bennu, we have honed our sample recovery skills.”

OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer, is NASA’s first mission to return asteroid samples. The spacecraft was on a seven-year journey. After launching in 2016, OSIRIS-REx began orbiting Bennu in 2018, The sample was collected in 2020 It will set off on its long journey back to Earth in May 2021.

Since leaving Bennu, the spacecraft has orbited the Sun twice so that it can get on the right path to rendezvous with Earth.

In July, the mission team sent out a series of maneuvers to help the spacecraft target a landing site for the capsule at the Utah Department of Defense’s Test and Training Range outside Salt Lake City.

On September 24, NASA will present a Live broadcast The sample being delivered to the ground. It will go live at 10 a.m. ET, and the capsule containing the sample will enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. ET, traveling at about 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometers per hour).

Four hours before the capsule enters the atmosphere, the mission team will decide whether to send a command to the spacecraft to launch the capsule, said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The decision depends on the spacecraft’s trajectory, which determines the safety of humans within the landing area, the capsule’s ability to stay in the corner, the return temperature, and the accuracy of the descent. The capsule will be launched when OSIRIS-REx is 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth, heading for an area spanning 250 square miles (647.5 square kilometers) — “the equivalent of throwing a dart along a basketball court and hitting a ball.” “Bull’s eye,” Burns said.

Once the capsule is launched, OSIRIS-REx will perform a diversionary maneuver that will put it on a trajectory around the sun while targeting another asteroid. ApophisBurns said, to meet in 2029.

Entering Earth’s atmosphere would envelop the capsule in a superheated fireball, but the container’s heat shield would protect the sample inside.

Sandra Freund, of OSIRIS-REx, said parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule for a gentle 11 mph (17.7 kph) descent, and rescue teams will be on standby to retrieve the capsule as soon as it is safe to do so. Program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and capsule recovery assistance.

Landing is expected in 13 minutes The capsule enters Earth’s atmosphere.

A helicopter will load the sample into a cargo net and deliver it to the temporary cleanroom set up at the range in June. There, a team will prepare the sample container for transport on a C-17 aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on September 25. Details of the sample will be revealed to the public via a NASA broadcast from Johnson on Oct. 11.

Freund said teams at NASA and Lockheed Martin aerospace company rehearsed every possible step to prepare for delivery day.

Recently, the team used aircraft to drop a sample capsule, collect it, and prepare it for transportation.

She also worked through difficult scenarios from the command center, such as what to do if the spacecraft restarts, how to bring it out of safe mode, and how to transfer communications between different centers in the event of a network outage.

The team also prepared for different landing scenarios, such as a hard landing where the capsule containing the sample opens unexpectedly. The team will then assess whether any of the samples can be preserved.

Another possibility, Burns said, is that the spacecraft can’t release the sample on Sept. 24 if landing within range is not viable. In this scenario, the sample would remain on the spacecraft, and the spacecraft’s orbit would carry the capsule Back by Earth for another launch attempt over Utah in 2025.

See also  Revealing the origin of supermassive black holes

Johnson Space Center has a history of storing, processing and analyzing extraterrestrial materials, including lunar samples from the Apollo missions. Kevin Reiter, vice president of processing for OSIRIS-REx, said NASA has been working on a special facility in Johnson for the Bennu sample for years.

A dedicated cleanroom will prevent possible contamination with other groups as the scientists analyze soil and rocks over the next two years. Some materials will be smaller than a grain of sand, says Christopher Snead, Small Particle Processing Lead and OSIRIS-REx Deputy Curator at Johnson’s.

“We have developed custom tools to carefully handle these precious particles inside our new glove boxes,” Snead said in a statement, referring to Hazardous Materials Management or extraterrestrial bins.

NASA

The researchers will use glove boxes in the new cleanroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to handle the sample carefully.

The sample will reveal information about the formation and history of our solar system, as well as the role of asteroids in helping to develop habitable planets like Earth. Scientists believe that asteroids like Bennu collided with Earth early in its formation, providing it with elements such as water.

The sample will be divided and sent to laboratories around the world, including OSIRIS-REx mission partners at the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. About 70% of the pure sample will remain in storage, so future generations with better technology can learn more than is possible now.

“The asteroids we have in our solar system today are left behind “From the very first stage in the history of the solar system,” said Lauretta. “We are literally looking at geological materials that formed before the Earth existed. I call them grandfather rocks, the ones that represent our origins and where we come from. This is a gift to the world.”