NASA is wrapping up its preparations for the landing on Earth of a precious asteroid sample next month.
Teams with the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission performed an important test on Wednesday (Aug. 30), retrieving a dummy capsule that fell to Earth within the U.S. Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range, within the desert west of Salt Lake City.
That is where OSIRIS-REx’s real sample capsule, containing about 8.8 ounces (250 grams) of fabric from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, will touch down on Sept. 24.
“We at the moment are mere weeks away from receiving a bit of solar system history on Earth, and this successful drop test ensures we’re ready,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Pristine material from asteroid Bennu will help make clear the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and even perhaps on how life on Earth began,” Fox added.
OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016, on a mission to check and snag samples from Bennu, a potentially dangerous asteroid about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide.
The spacecraft arrived at Bennu in December 2018. It then eyed the asteroid up close for nearly two years, taking the rock’s measure and on the lookout for good places at which to swoop in and grab a sample.
That moment arrived in October 2020, and it got here with a good little bit of drama and surprise.
“We thought of course we’ll touch down on a solid surface — this was an asteroid, it was a rock from outer space — nevertheless it actually responded more like a fluid, like in case you dropped yourself right into a ball pit at a kid’s playground,” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“The excellent news was, due to that basically soft surface, we collected an unlimited amount of fabric,” he added.
That material is now winging its approach to Earth aboard OSIRIS-REx, whose name is brief for “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer.” The mission team has been practicing for its arrival for some time now, conducting a series of tests this spring and summer. Wednesday’s capsule recovery is an element of the last major practice run, NASA officials said.
After the capsule touches down, it’ll be transported to a clean room on the Utah military range, where it’ll processed. The Bennu material will then be sent to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where or not it’s curated.
Over the approaching months and years, a few of this asteroid material might be sent to scientists around the globe, who will study it for clues about how our solar system formed and evolved.
Researchers will even search for evidence of organic molecules, the carbon-containing constructing blocks of life. Carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu are thought to have delivered much of this material to our planet, together with numerous water, through impacts way back.
OSIRIS-REx is not landing on Earth next month, by the best way: The probe will keep flying, on an prolonged mission to explore the asteroid Apophis.
OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to reach at Apophis — like Bennu, a potentially hazardous asteroid — in 2029.