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The OSIRIS-REx satellite, launched in September 2016, is getting closer to its goal, the asteroid Bennu. And on October 16th, NASA confirmed that a milestone had been reached: the craft had deployed its robotic arm and tested it to confirm that it was ready to depart when & # 39; 39 it would reach the asteroid.
The robotic arm is officially called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) and is an essential part of the craft mission of collecting a sample of the asteroid. The arm had to be tested by folding it in all its range of motion and making sure all the joints worked properly. The arm test was successfully confirmed by telemetry data and images taken by the SamCam camera onboard the craft.
The arm is composed of three joints, a sampling head that collects the sample and looks approximately like a car air filter and three bottles of nitrogen gas maintained at high pressure. It was designed by the aerospace company Lockheed Martin to "mark" the asteroid by maneuvering the craft nearby, then deploying the arm to collect a sample. The nitrogen gas in the arm will be thrown onto the surface of the asteroid to stir dirt and rocks that will then be captured by the sampler head – much like a vacuum cleaner. The collected particles will be stored in a can and the nitrogen will escape, leaving a sample of 60 to 2,000 grams of material for study and examination. The collection process should take only about 5 seconds, and then the spacecraft will make careful maneuvers to back away from the asteroid and return home.
OSIRIS-REx is expected to arrive in Bennu in about two weeks and then prepare to collect a sample of rock and soil in its surface in July 2020. Once the sample is taken, the machine will turn around and deliver it on earth. should arrive in the West Utah Desert in 2023. The sample could shed some light on the early formation of the solar system because the asteroid is extremely old – even older than the solar system itself.
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