Pebbles from an Asteroid Are about to Be Delivered to Earth, and It’s Totally Awesome

[Elderberry]

Scientific American By Clara Moskowitz

The OSIRIS-REx mission will return samples from the asteroid Bennu that could rewrite our solar system’s history

What would it be like to hold a piece of outer space in your hand? Some lucky scientists will find out soon when NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (shorthand for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) returns from its seven-year mission. The probe will drop off a canister holding about a cup of pebbles and dust from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. “Bennu is a time capsule of the early solar system, and we're cracking it open,” says Amy Hofmann, an isotope geochemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is a co-investigator on the mission. “We get to be the first people to see what's in there. I'm getting goose bumps talking about this.”

Hofmann is one of around 200 scientists who will receive portions of the cargo OSIRIS-REx brings back. On September 24 the probe is set to release its sample return capsule, which will barrel through Earth's atmosphere and make a parachute landing at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. If all goes well, recovery teams will helicopter it to a portable clean room to remove its heat shield and back shell and then fly it to a specially prepared facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Scientists there will carefully open the inner container, handling it inside a glove box to keep out all contaminants, to retrieve some of the only pristine primordial bits of asteroid ever to reach Earth's surface. (Meteorites are great, too, but their unprotected burn through our atmosphere alters them.)

The samples will reveal the state of the solar system when it was first forming, including which amino acids and other chemical compounds important for biology were present. “The ‘O’ in ‘OSIRIS-REx’ is really for the origin of life,” says Dante S. Lauretta of the University of Arizona, the mission's principal investigator. “We want to understand the role that these carbon-rich asteroids played in delivering the precursors of life to Earth.”

More: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pebbles-from-an-asteroid-are-about-to-be-delivered-to-earth-and-its-totally-awesome/

[sneakypete]

You just KNOW they are all as giddy as school girls at the prospect of this happening.

[Kamaji]

NASA prepares for return of asteroid sample after breakthrough 7-year mission

By Emilee Speck, FOX Weather
June 28, 2023

NASA’s first spacecraft to collect a sample from an asteroid will complete its 7-year mission later this year when OSIRIS-REx drops off some of asteroid Bennu in Utah.

OSIRIS-REx – a fancy acronym for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer – collected an estimated 2 pounds of asteroid rocks and dirt known as regolith in 2020.

Before the spacecraft used its pogo-stick-like arm to vacuum up regolith, it first took two years of spaceflight to catch up with the asteroid and then orbited the small world, mapping its surface.

In September, OSIRIS-REx will deploy a small capsule with Bennu dirt inside, setting it on a trajectory for Earth.

The capsule will hopefully land on Sept. 24 with the help of a parachute in Utah.

*  *  *

Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/06/28/nasa-prepares-for-return-of-asteroid-sample-with-landing-in-utah/

[Idiot]

Amazing!

[sneakypete]

NASA prepares for return of asteroid sample after breakthrough 7-year mission

By Emilee Speck, FOX Weather
June 28, 2023

NASA’s first spacecraft to collect a sample from an asteroid will complete its 7-year mission later this year when OSIRIS-REx drops off some of asteroid Bennu in Utah.

OSIRIS-REx – a fancy acronym for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer – collected an estimated 2 pounds of asteroid rocks and dirt known as regolith in 2020.

Before the spacecraft used its pogo-stick-like arm to vacuum up regolith, it first took two years of spaceflight to catch up with the asteroid and then orbited the small world, mapping its surface.

In September, OSIRIS-REx will deploy a small capsule with Bennu dirt inside, setting it on a trajectory for Earth.

The capsule will hopefully land on Sept. 24 with the help of a parachute in Utah.

*  *  *

Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/06/28/nasa-prepares-for-return-of-asteroid-sample-with-landing-in-utah/

@Kamaji

Not sure why,but this makes me as giddy as a schoolgirl,too.