First NASA asteroid sample return mission on track for fall ’23 delivery

NASA’s first asteroid pattern return spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, fired its thrusters for 30 seconds on Sept. 21 and nudged its trajectory towards Earth. The ensuing course correction retains the car on observe to ship a pattern of asteroid Bennu to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, finishing a seven-year mission.

The supply itself, nonetheless, will not be a easy parcel drop on Earth’s entrance doorstep: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx—formally the Origins Spectral Interpretation Useful resource Identification Safety—Regolith Explorer—should method Earth at a exact velocity and course to ship its pattern return capsule into Earth’s ambiance. “If the capsule is angled too excessive, it would skip off the ambiance,” mentioned Mike Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy challenge supervisor at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Angled too low, it would dissipate in Earth’s ambiance.”

To make sure a secure supply, “Over the subsequent yr, we’ll steadily modify the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to focus on the spacecraft nearer to Earth,” mentioned Daniel Wibben, trajectory-and-maneuver design lead with KinetX Inc. “We’ve got to cross Earth’s orbit on the time that Earth will likely be at that very same location.” Wibben works intently with the Lockheed Martin group in Littleton, Colorado, that flies the spacecraft.

Final month’s maneuver was the primary time the OSIRIS-REx group modified the spacecraft’s trajectory because it left Bennu on Could 10, 2021. Following this course adjustment, OSIRIS-REx would go about 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometers) from Earth. A collection of maneuvers starting in July 2023 will carry OSIRIS-REx even nearer, to 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the floor, shut sufficient to launch its pattern capsule for a precision touchdown—by way of parachute on the Air Drive’s Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary within the Nice Salt Lake Desert.

Asteroids can act as time capsules, preserving the earliest historical past of our solar system and probably even chemical signatures of the ancestorial constructing blocks of life—one thing scientists might study extra about by learning the Bennu samples within the lab. With simply lower than a yr to go, the mission group is already making ready for the pattern’s arrival.

NASA is working intently with the Air Drive and Military to follow capsule retrieval and transport to onsite services on the Utah vary.

NASA’s Johnson Area Heart in Houston constructed a brand new curation lab particularly to retailer the pattern. Engineers and curation specialists are designing specialised gloveboxes, instruments, and storage containers to protect the pattern in pristine situation.

Johnson will oversee distribution of pattern parts to scientists worldwide. The space center may also retain and protect a big fraction of what OSIRIS-REx returns for future generations to review. That is much like the method employed with Apollo Moon samples, a few of that are solely now being opened for examination with expertise that did not exist when the lunar missions returned them many years in the past.

NASA launched OSIRIS-REx on Sept. 8, 2016. The spacecraft arrived at Bennu in December 2018, then surveyed the asteroid for greater than two years. On Oct. 20, 2020, the spacecraft collected a pattern from the asteroid and stowed it in its pattern return capsule.

After OSIRIS-REx returns this pattern to Earth, the spacecraft continues on an prolonged mission beneath the title “OSIRIS-APEX” to asteroid Apophis.