A seven-year area voyage comes to its climactic finish September 24 when a NASA capsule lands in the desert in the U.S. state of Utah, carrying to Earth the most important asteroid samples ever collected.
Scientists have excessive hopes for the sample, saying it can present a greater understanding of the formation of our photo voltaic system and the way Earth grew to become liveable.
The Osiris-Rex probe’s last, fiery descent via Earth’s environment might be perilous, however the U.S. area company is hoping for a delicate touchdown, round 9:00am native (15H00 GMT), in a navy check vary in northwestern Utah.
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Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and picked up roughly 9 ounces (250 grams) of mud from its rocky floor.
Even that small quantity, NASA says, ought to “help us better understand the types of asteroids that could threaten Earth” and solid mild “on the earliest history of our solar system,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson mentioned.
“This sample return is really historic,” NASA scientist Amy Simon advised AFP. “This is going to be the biggest sample we’ve brought back since the Apollo moon rocks” had been returned to Earth.
But the capsule’s return would require “a dangerous maneuver,” she acknowledged.
Osiris-Rex launched the capsule early September 24 — from an altitude of greater than 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) — some 4 hours earlier than it lands.
The fiery passage via the environment will come solely in the final 13 minutes, because the capsule hurtles downward at a pace of greater than 27,000 miles per hour, with temperatures of up to 5,000 Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius).
Its fast descent, monitored by military sensors, might be slowed by two successive parachutes. Should they fail to deploy accurately, a “hard landing” would comply with.
If it had appeared that the goal zone (37 miles by 9 miles) could be missed, NASA controllers might resolve on the final second not to launch the capsule.
But all programs are go, as NASA’s Planetary Science Division posted on X, previously Twitter, that Osiris-Rex launched the capsule with the asteroid sample at 1042 GMT.
“The capsule will plummet through space for four hours, enter the atmosphere over California and land about 13 minutes later in Utah,” it mentioned.
The probe, having efficiently launched its cargo, fired its engines and shifted course away from Earth, NASA mentioned, “on its way” for a date with one other asteroid, often known as Apophis.
Scientists predict it can come inside 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029.
Japanese samples
Once the tire-sized capsule touches down in Utah, a crew in protecting masks and gloves will place it in a internet to be airlifted by helicopter to a brief “clean room” close by.
Crews transfer one of many helicopters that may take part in the Osiris-Rex asteroid sample return restoration mission out of a hanger at Dugway, Utah early September 24, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
NASA desires this carried out shortly and thoroughly to keep away from any contamination of the sample with desert sands, skewing check outcomes.
On Monday the sample is to be flown by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, the field might be opened in one other “clean room.”
NASA plans to announce its first outcomes at a information convention October 11.
Most of the sample might be conserved for examine by future generations. Roughly one-fourth might be instantly used in experiments, and a small quantity might be despatched to mission companions Japan and Canada.
Japan had earlier given NASA a couple of grains from asteroid Ryugu, after bringing 0.2 ounces of mud to Earth in 2020 throughout the Hayabusa-2 mission. Ten years earlier than, it had introduced again a microscopic amount from one other asteroid.
But the sample from Bennu is way bigger, permitting for considerably extra testing, Simon mentioned.
Earth’s origin story
Asteroids are composed of the unique supplies of the photo voltaic system, courting again some 4.5 billion years, and have remained comparatively intact.
They “can give us clues about how the solar system formed and evolved,” mentioned Osiris-Rex program government Melissa Morris.
“It’s our own origin story.”
By putting Earth’s floor, “we do believe asteroids and comets delivered organic material, potentially water, that helped life flourish here on Earth,” Simon mentioned.
Scientists imagine Bennu, about 500 meters (1,640 toes) in diameter, is wealthy in carbon — a constructing block of life on Earth — and comprises water molecules locked in minerals.
Bennu stunned scientists in 2020 when the probe, throughout its transient contact with the asteroid’s floor, sank into the soil, revealing an unexpectedly low density, like a youngsters’s pool full of plastic balls.
Understanding its composition might come in helpful in the — distant — future.
For there’s a slight, however non-zero, likelihood (one in 2,700) that Bennu might collide catastrophically with Earth, although not till 2182.
But NASA final yr efficiently deviated the course of an asteroid by crashing a probe into it in a check, and it’d in some unspecified time in the future want to repeat that train — however with a lot larger stakes.
