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On May 10, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will leave near-Earth asteroid Bennu and begin an almost three-year journey to Earth, NASA officials said this week.
The spacecraft, officially known as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, carries a large sample it collected from the asteroid’s surface in October. The purpose of the mission was to collect 60 grams or 2 ounces of material – and while scientists won’t know for sure until they open it, it appears the collection event exceeded that target. Regolith is a layer of dust and broken rocks on the surface of asteroids and planets.
The asteroid sample could further shed light on the formation of the solar system and how things like water may have been delivered to early Earth through the impacts of these rocky remains.
When OSIRIS-REx leaves Bennu in May, it will begin the 200 million kilometer journey to Earth. The sample is scheduled to be delivered to Earth on September 24, 2023.
The spacecraft first arrived for Bennu’s close examination in 2018 and has been orbiting the asteroid ever since. And he’s going to take one last look at the asteroid before the spacecraft bids farewell to its only companion in space for the past few years.
In April, the spacecraft will perform a final flyby of the asteroid to see how the spacecraft’s contact with Bennu’s surface may have altered the sample collection site.
Originally, OSIRIS-REx was scheduled to leave Bennu in March.
“Leaving the vicinity of Bennu in May puts us in the ‘sweet spot’, when the departure maneuver will consume the least fuel on board the spacecraft,” said Michael Moreau, deputy director of the OSIRIS-REx project at Goddard Space Flight. NASA Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“Nonetheless, with over 593 miles per hour (265 meters per second) of gear shifting, this will be the largest propulsive maneuver conducted by OSIRIS-REx since Bennu’s approach in October 2018.”
The early April flyby was not originally part of the mission, so a May departure leaves more time for that last look.
If all goes as planned, OSIRIS-REx will fly over the sampling site, called Nightingale, two miles away.
When the sampling head on the spacecraft’s arm descended to the asteroid’s surface in October, it sank about 1.6 feet below the material lying on the asteroid. It was called the TAG or Touch and Go event.
The spacecraft also fired its thrusters to get away safely from the asteroid.
These two events likely threw material onto the asteroid’s surface and changed the appearance of the Nightingale site.
This flyby will be similar to the OSIRIS-REx observation ones conducted at Bennu for about a year before the mission team decides on the right place to land and collect a sample.
The spacecraft will observe a full rotation of Bennu, including his northern and southern hemispheres and equator, and these images can be compared to the images he collected in 2019.
The flyby also serves as a good test for scientific instruments on OSIRIS-REx, which may have been covered with dust during sample collection. The spacecraft may have a future beyond this mission if everything works out in order, as it will simply drop the sample on Earth, and not land on the planet.
Once OSIRIS-REx nears Earth in 2023, it will drop the capsule containing the sample, which will pass through Earth’s atmosphere and parachute into the Utah desert.
A team will be ready to retrieve the sample from an aircraft hangar that will serve as a temporary clean room. The sample will then be transported to laboratories currently under construction at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“OSIRIS-REx has already provided incredible science,” Lori Glaze, director of planetary science at NASA, said in a statement. “We are truly delighted that the mission is planning another observational flyby of asteroid Bennu to provide new information on how the asteroid responded to TAG and to say goodbye to it.
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