NASA has worked on creating a special facility at Johnson for the Bennu sample for years, said Kevin Righter, OSIRIS-REx deputy curation lead. Johnson Space Center has a history of storing, handling and analyzing extraterrestrial materials, including lunar samples from the Apollo missions. In that scenario, the sample would remain on board, and the spacecraft’s orbit would bring the capsule back by Earth to attempt another release over Utah in 2025. The team would then assess whether any of the sample could be saved.Īnother possibility is that the spacecraft can’t release the sample on September 24 if landing within range isn’t viable, Burns said. The team has also prepared for different landing scenarios, such as a hard landing where the capsule containing the sample opens unexpectedly.
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It also worked through challenging scenarios from the command center, such as what to do if the spacecraft reboots, how to bring it out of safe mode, and how to transfer communications between different centers in case of network outages.
Recently, the team used an aircraft to drop a sample capsule, collect it and prepare it for transport. Teams at NASA and Lockheed Martin Space have rehearsed every possible step to prepare for delivery day, Freund said. Details about the sample will be revealed to the public through a NASA broadcast from Johnson on October 11. There, a team will prepare the sample container for transport on a C-17 aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on September 25.
Landing is expected 13 minutes after the capsule enters Earth’s atmosphere.Ī helicopter will carry the sample in a cargo net and deliver it to a temporary cleanroom established at the range in June. Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule down for a gentle touchdown at 11 miles per hour (17.7 kilometers per hour), and recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so, said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and help recover the capsule. Once the capsule releases, OSIRIS-REx will make a divert maneuver that sets it on a path around the sun as it targets another asteroid, Apophis, for a rendezvous in 2029, Burns said.Įntering Earth’s atmosphere will cause the capsule to become enveloped by a superhot ball of fire, but the container’s heat shield will protect the sample inside. The capsule will be released when OSIRIS-REx is 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth, headed for an area spanning 250 square miles (647.5 square kilometers) - “the equivalent of throwing a dart across the length of a basketball court and hitting the bull’s-eye,” Burns said.
The decision depends on the spacecraft’s trajectory, which determines the safety of humans within the landing zone, the capsule’s ability to survive the angle, the temperature of reentry, and accuracy of landing. ET, traveling about 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometers per hour).įour hours before the capsule’s atmospheric entry, the mission team will decide whether to send a command to the spacecraft to release the capsule, said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. ET, and the capsule containing the sample will enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. On September 24, NASA will provide a live stream of the sample being delivered to Earth. In July, the mission team sent a sequence of maneuvers to help the spacecraft target a landing site for the capsule at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range outside Salt Lake City. Since leaving Bennu, the spacecraft has circled the sun twice so that it can be on the right trajectory to rendezvous with Earth. After launching in 2016, OSIRIS-REx began orbiting Bennu in 2018, collected the sample in 2020 and set off on its lengthy return trip to Earth in May 2021.
The spacecraft has been on a seven-year journey. OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, is NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission. “Just as our meticulous planning and rehearsal prepared us to collect a sample from Bennu, we have honed our skills for sample recovery.” “I am immensely proud of the efforts our team has poured into this endeavor,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a statement. But if the capsule crash-lands and pops open, the sample could become contaminated. The mission’s original goal was to retrieve a pristine asteroid sample.
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