A NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx touched down on the rugged surface of the Bennu asteroid on Tuesday, grabbing a sample of rocks dating back to the birth of our solar system to bring home.
The minivan-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, unfurled its 11-foot (3.35 m) robotic arm toward a flat patch of gravel near Bennu’s north pole and collected samples of dust and pebbles, the space agency’s first handful of pristine asteroid rocks. The robotic arm’s collection device, shaped like an oversized shower head, is designed to release a pressurized gas to kick up debris.
This well-preserved, ancient asteroid, known as Bennu, is currently more than 200 million miles (321 million kilometers) from Earth. It offers scientists a window into the early solar system as it was first taking shape billions of years ago and flinging ingredients that could have helped seed life on Earth.
If the sample collection event, known as “Touch-And-Go” (TAG), provided enough of a sample, mission teams will command the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to begin stowing the precious primordial cargo to begin its journey back to Earth in March 2021. Otherwise, they will prepare for another attempt in January.
The probe will send back images of the sample collection on Wednesday and throughout the week so scientists can examine how much material was retrieved and determine whether the probe will need to make another collection attempt.
The spacecraft was launched in 2016 from Kennedy Space Centre for the journey to Bennu. It has been in orbit around the asteroid for nearly two years preparing for the “touch and go” maneuver.
“After over a decade of planning, the team is overjoyed at the success of today’s sampling attempt,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Even though we have some work ahead of us to determine the outcome of the event – the successful contact, the TAGSAM gas firing, and back-away from Bennu are major accomplishments for the team. I look forward to analyzing the data to determine the mass of sample collected,” Lauretta said.
