Almost three yr after touching the surface of asteroid Bennu , NASA ’s OSIRIS - REx is coming back to Earth . The spacecraft is bringing back a sampling pick up during that unbelievable encounter and is schedule to expend its wanted cargo in the Utah desert on Sunday , making it the first - ever US foreign mission to bring a piece of an asteroid back to Earth .
Bennu , a spinning top - shaped space rock about half a kilometer wide , is the most dangerous known " potentially hazardous " asteroid ( althoughdon’t be too worried ) . It ’s thought it has changed very small since the geological formation of the Solar System and studying its properties might give us a coup d’oeil into the time of the birth of the major planet . asteroid like Bennu may have even brought water and the ancient construction blocks of living to Earth .
The mission team has beenrehearsing the retrievalfor calendar month now . Showtime is September 24 at about 8:42 am local time ( 2:42 pm UTC ) . The ejector seat will enter the atmosphere , deploy a parachute , and land within a sure domain of the US Air Force ’s Utah Test and Training Range . The capsule will then be taken to aspecial kitted - up roomto stave off contamination where it will be treat , items like the heating plant carapace and back shell will be bump off , and atomic number 7 will be used to move out O and moisture from the sample canister .
It will then be taken down to NASA ’s Johnson Space Center – and that ’s where the skill will begin . The sample will be opened in a specialized cleanroom and inside a glovebox . From there , portions of the sampling will be given to research institute that request it . The team estimates they have more than the demand 60 grams ; in fact , NASA guess that between 400 and 1,000 Hans C. J. Gram ( 14 - 35 ounces ) of materialwere collect . So , there is plenty of it to go around .
" I ’m very concerned in the arrival of the specimen from the asteroid Bennu . This will be the orotund specimen we ’ve received from an asteroid to date , ” BrotherBob Macke , the curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory , told IFLScience .
Macke has develop a pycnometer , a machine to measure the volume and thus the density and porousness of cosmic material . Assessing those characteristic will provide a open idea of how Bennu came to be . The expectation was that the asteroid would be covered in sand - like soil ; instead , OSIRIS - REx discovered a lot of boulders .
The ok cloth that would be easier to scoop up was found in craters and depressions on the surface . Reaching down there was a risky move , though . The whole asteroid is a big debris pile , generally defy together by gravity . So generally , in fact , that OSIRIS - REx was almostgobbled upby Bennu – like sinking in a ball pit .
“ It became patent the stuff that we could gather up was in these really small bowl - forge volcanic crater , which the space vehicle team was not excited about sending the spacecraft into . But right away I was like , we have to count on out how to get into one of these craters . And it was the stereo images that [ allow it ] , that was my ' Wow ' moment,”Dante Lauretta , primary investigator of OSIRIS - REx , severalise IFLScience .
The 3D stereoscopic image of Bennu that led to finding a mostly safe locating to land and scoop up a sampling were produced by astrophysicist and rockstar Sir Brian May and his collaborator Claudia Manzoni , which May and Lauretta bring out as astereoscopic al-Qur’an , where the asteroid ’s uneven anatomical structure can be clearly insure .
The peculiar physical composition of Bennu is one of the ground why it was chosen as the first US asteroid sample distribution - return mission . Bennu is like a time ejector seat from the parturition of the Solar System , a rude physical object that might order us more about the conditions of our corner of the universe at the time of the formation of our planet .
But the sample distribution from Bennu will also contextualize the other ways we examine the sentence of the formation of the Solar System : meteorites . While some meteorite are from the Moon and Mars ( although peradventure one camefrom Earth ) , a lot of them come from asteroid . Unfortunately , we stay unlettered of what type of asteroids they came from and where in the Solar System they are . The sample will assist clarify some of those unknowns .
“ To go to the next step in meteorite enquiry , we really need to have that context : Both the geological circumstance of what stone were around the sampling that we ’ve got , but also the astronomical context , eff the whereabouts in the Solar System the sampling come , ” ProfessorSara Russell , part of the OSIRIS - king Sample Analysis Team from the Natural History Museum , London , recite IFLScience .
“ outer space mission [ like OSIRIS - REx ] are like fieldwork for meteoricists . They ’re like the next stride that will enable us to learn more about these really of import rocks , and what they can order us about the beginning of the Solar System . ”
After dropping off its consignment , the commission will modify its name to become OSIRIS - APEX , proceed towardsanother Near - Earth object , asteroid Apophis , which it will reach in 2029 .
