Sept. 24 was an enormous day for NASA, when an orange-and-white capsule containing pieces of an asteroid landed on Earth, charred from its ultrahigh-speed fall through our atmosphere. The asteroid in query, named Bennu, is assumed to have been roaming space for the reason that early days of our solar system — meaning these samples could disclose to us what our cosmic neighborhood looked like way before we came.
Shot into space as a part of the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2016, the capsule was enclosed for years inside a spacecraft that made a 4-billion-mile-long journey to achieve Bennu. Once on the asteroid‘s surface, it then prolonged an arm that briefly touched down on the rock so as to retrieve slightly little bit of its material.
The hope, scientists had said, was to gather no less than 60 grams of Bennu‘s material — and, on Monday (Oct. 23), the OSIRIS-REx team announced the mighty spacecraft managed to retrieve way more. Far. More.
Related: NASA’s 1st asteroid sample is wealthy in carbon and water, OSIRIS-REx team finds
In response to a NASA blog post, the curation team that is been processing the samples says it has removed and picked up 70.3 grams (2.48 ounces) of Bennu material from the capsule up to now — and it hasn’t even actually been opened yet. Those 70.3 grams come from just the world on the surface (and a part of the within) of the sample collector’s head.
“The sample processed up to now includes the rocks and mud found on the surface of the sampler head, in addition to a portion of the majority sample from inside the top, which was accessed through the top’s mylar flap,” the post states. “Additional material remaining contained in the sampler head, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM, is ready for removal later, adding to the mass total.”
Despite the fact that OSIRIS-REx is not the primary asteroid-sample-return mission humanity has accomplished — JAXA’s Hayabusa takes that title — it’s the heftiest. Or, in other words, the capsule that landed in September delivered the largest-ever asteroid sample to our planet,
And NASA, in actual fact, intends on sharing the wealth.
The agency has said it’s going to give 25% of the Bennu bits to over 200 scientists at 25 different facilities, 4% to the Canadian Space Agency and 0.5% to JAXA. (NASA received about 10% of the Hayabusa 1 asteroid payload from an area rock named Itokawa.) The remaining roughly 70%, the team says, will likely be stored at Johnson Space Center to be studied for years to come back, very like Apollo moon rock samples proceed to be investigated a long time after being delivered to Earth by astronauts.
A part of the rationale there may be a lot of the Bennu sample inside this capsule actually has to do with the touch-and-go process itself. When the OSIRIS-REx sample collection mechanism dipped toward the rock to collect a number of asteroid pieces, scientists watching were surprised to see Bennu wasn’t a pleasant, solid object like you may expect. No, it was sort of malleable; when the sample collection arm made contact with the rock, shrouds of dust particles were released into the air, causing quite a scene and almost swallowing the spacecraft.
This can be why scientists still aren’t sure exactly how much sample is within the OSIRIS-REx capsule typically. We’ll only know when the container is finally opened up. Next, the team will start tackling find out how to perform that task— but, based on the blog post, that may prove barely difficult.
“After multiple attempts at removal, the team discovered two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head couldn’t be removed with the present tools approved to be used within the OSIRIS-REx glovebox,” it says. “The team has been working to develop and implement latest approaches to extract the fabric inside the top, while continuing to maintain the sample protected and pristine.”
Mainly, the OSIRIS-REx scientists have many regulations in place for find out how to take care of the sample because it’s totally necessary they do not interfere with its preservation. For example, the blog post says, all curation work is performed inside a special glove box that has a relentless flow of nitrogen. Without that flow, the sample could be exposed to Earth’s atmosphere.
“While the procedure to access the ultimate portion of the fabric is being developed,” the post continues, “the team has removed the TAGSAM head from the energetic flow of nitrogen within the glovebox and stored it in its transfer container, sealed with an O-ring and surrounded by a sealed Teflon bag to ensure that the sample is kept protected in a stable, nitrogen-rich, environment.”