The spacecraft at the center of NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission has changed its trajectory in preparation for its return to Earth next year.
On September 21st OSIRIS-REx The spacecraft fired its thrusters for 30 seconds for a course correction. This is the first time the spacecraft has carried a low-Earth sample Asteroid Bennu has changed its trajectory since leaving Space Rock on May 10, 2021.
asteroids are made of material left over from the beginnings of the solar system and the formation of its planets, including Earth. Scientists hope that by studying the dust and rock return from OSIRIS-REx on September 24, 2023, they could learn more about the building blocks of the solar system, and possibly even those of life itself.
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The OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, officially known as Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, is tasked with completing what is anything but a simple “package drop”. according to NASA.
The spacecraft must approach Earth at a precise speed and in the right direction in order to safely launch the capsule containing Bennu’s collected sample into the planet’s atmosphere.
“If the capsule is angled too high, it will skip the atmosphere,” said Mike Moreau, associate project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, in a expression. “Angled too low, it will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.”
Additional course corrections like these will therefore be essential in the coming year to ensure the success of the seven-year mission, which launched on September 8, 2016 and arrived in Bennu on October 20, 2020.
If OSIRIS-REx stayed on its current trajectory, the spacecraft would pass Earth at a distance of about 1,370 miles (2,200 kilometers), so the spacecraft will begin a series of steering maneuvers in July 2023.
“Over the next year, we will gradually adjust the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to target the spacecraft closer to Earth,” said Daniel Wibben, director of trajectory and maneuver design at KinetX Inc., which works with the Lockheed Martin team , the spaceship controls the statement. “We need to cross Earth’s orbit at the time Earth is in the same place.”
The process will take the spacecraft to about 155 miles (250 km) of the Earth’s surface. This is close enough to release its sample capsule into the atmosphere for a precision parachute landing at the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert.
Next, NASA personnel will take the returned cargo to a newly built and purpose-built curation laboratory at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Scientists will use equipment such as special glove boxes, tools and storage containers, all designed to protect the sample from contamination and keep it as close as possible to the state when it was collected by OSIRIS-REx. Samples collected by the mission will also be sent to teams of scientists around the world, and a large sample will be preserved for future generations to study.
However, not all Bennu results from the OSIRIS-REx mission have to wait for the test.
Even before the spacecraft reaches Earth next year, it has provided data that could teach researchers more about the asteroid.
In July, scientists announced that data collected by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu’s surface showed that the asteroid is so loosely packed that if the spacecraft had attempted to land on it instead of firing its thrusters to quickly back away, it would have sunk below the surface of the asteroid.
OSIRIS-REx has also provided NASA with data important for calculating the potentially dangerous object’s future orbit by 2300. This information could be crucial in determining whether Bennu, which is 1,200 feet (490 meters) in diameter, could hit Earth after close approach in 2135.
“NASA’s Planetary Defense mission is to find and monitor asteroids and comets that are approaching Earth and may pose a threat to our planet,” said Kelly Fast, program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at the NASA, in a 2021 expression.
“We are conducting this endeavor through ongoing astronomical surveys that collect data to discover previously unknown objects and refine our orbital models for them,” she added. “The OSIRIS-REx mission has provided us with an exceptional opportunity to refine and test these models and help us better predict where Bennu will be when it approaches Earth more than a century from now.”
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