NASA’s first-ever pristine asteroid sample will come all the way down to Earth on Sunday morning (Sept. 24), and you’ll be able to watch the historic motion live.
If all goes based on plan, the agency’s OSIRIS-REx probe will release a capsule containing samples of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Sunday at 6:42 a.m. EDT (1042 GMT).
That capsule will touch down softly under parachutes at 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT) on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Grounds, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Salt Lake City.
You’ll be able to watch the landing, and the leadup to it, live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency’s YouTube channel. Coverage will start at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).
The $1 billion OSIRIS-REx mission — whose name is brief for “Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer” — launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September 2016.
OSIRIS-REx headed for Bennu, a potentially hazardous asteroid that is about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide. The probe reached its goal in December 2018, setting a brand new record for smallest body ever orbited by a spacecraft, and investigated the rock over the following 22 months.
Then, in October 2020, OSIRIS-REx swooped all the way down to Bennu’s surface and snagged a heaping helping of dirt and gravel — presumably about 8.8 ounces (250 grams) of the stuff. Nonetheless, the precise quantity won’t be known until mission team members open the probe’s sample capsule finally.
And that step is just across the corner, for the capsule is coming down on Sunday.
A day or so after touchdown, the Bennu sample will make its option to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, where it’ll be curated and stored. JSC personnel will oversee the fabric’s distribution to scientists world wide, who will study it for a wide range of purposes.
For instance, they’ll search for clues in regards to the solar system’s early days, which could also be locked away inside the traditional, primitive asteroid. And scientists think that carbon-rich space rocks like Bennu delivered life’s constructing blocks to Earth billions of years ago, so some sample studies will give attention to the asteroid’s trove of carbon-containing organic molecules.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, by the way in which, will keep flying after Sunday. NASA has granted an prolonged mission called OSIRIS-APEX that takes the probe to the possibly hazardous asteroid Apophis. The probe will reach its goal in 2029, if all goes based on plan.