OSIRIS-REx: NASA rehearses historic asteroid sample recovery mission
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On September 24, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is due to return a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth.
The recovery team will have to act fast.
The capsule carrying the sample will perform a parachute-assisted landing within a 37-mile by 9-mile (59 km by 15 km) ellipse in the Utah desert. It must be recovered quickly to avoid Earth contaminants entering the capsule and spoiling the sample.
With this in mind, the OSIRIS-REx mission team performed a comprehensive rehearsal of the recovery of their spacecraft's asteroid sample on July 18-20.
Rehearsing an asteroid sample recovery
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on asteroid Bennu three years ago and collected a sample from its rocky surface. It is now in the final stretch of its return journey and the team behind the recovery are undergoing final preparations, a NASA blog post reveals.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to drop off the asteroid Bennu sample on September 24. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will drop off the sample in a capsule during a flyby of Earth, before heading for a rendezvous with its next target in 2029, asteroid Apophis.
The capsule will perform its parachute-assisted landing in the Utah desert, signaling the start of the recovery operation. The pressure will be on as the ground team will have to make sure it transports the sample to a clean room as quickly as possible to avoid any contamination.
To be precise, they will locate the sample capsule and hook it to a helicopter, which will transport it to a temporary clean room.
NASA's 'most realistic rehearsal yet'
Last week, the recovery team collected rock samples about 80 miles (128 kilometers) southwest of Salt Lake City, roughly at the same location where the real asteroid sample will land. They used the Earth rock samples to perform a recovery rehearsal, including a helicopter ride for the simulated sample.
"Though the team has rehearsed portions of the recovery operation many times this year, this was the most realistic rehearsal yet," NASA explained in its post.
When the real recovery operation takes place, the team will also collect rock samples from near the sample capsule to help determine whether any contamination may have entered the capsule or not.
The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA's first-ever attempt at retrieving a sample from an asteroid. It won't be the first space agency to do so, as Japanese space agency JAXA has recovered samples from asteroids on two occasions with its two Hayabusa missions starting in 2003.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched on September 8, 2016, and landed on asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Scientists hope the asteroid sample collected at Bennu will help to shed new light on the role asteroids have played in making life possible on Earth – a growing amount of scientific literature points to the fact that asteroids may have carried the building blocks of life to our planet.
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