“If anyone sees this, [the story] In the media, people say, “It’s just a screw, but how difficult can it be?” ”’ Salvador Martinez, an engineer who worked on the sample return mission, told The Washington Post.
Stubborn screws weren’t NASA’s biggest concern when the project began. It is possible that the OSIRIS-REX mission, named after the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft bound for the asteroid, will fail before scientists receive the sample and its rigid container. There were countless. This probe was given a demanding mission. It was launched in 2016 for a seven-year voyage to join Bennu, orbit the asteroid, collect samples from its surface, and return.
Returning Bennu’s samples was also risky. During a flyby in September of this year, OSIRIS-REx ejected a return capsule carrying a sample container. Survived atmospheric reentry defective parachute It lands in the Utah desert, unharmed and fully upright.
So Nicole Lanning, lead sample curator for the OSIRIS-REx team, expected the most difficult part of the mission to be over once the capsule was transported to Johnson Space Center in Houston. He has one important consideration left. It is to ensure that the asteroid samples in the container are not contaminated by materials on Earth. In Houston, the containers were stored in sealed boxes about the size of twin beds. Scientists could only operate it by reaching inside with gloves through ports built into the box, which limited their range of motion.
“It’s like taking apart a computer with oven mitts,” said Martinez, the mission’s lead engineer.
That shouldn’t have been a problem for Lanning’s team, which was practicing disassembling the capsule inside the box. The actual performance took place in October. Scientists removed the bolts holding the capsule in place one by one. Toward the end of the process, they discovered two fasteners less than an inch long. These fasteners not only did not move, but also began to deform the scientists’ tools.
Luning’s team reached into parts of the container with tweezers and a shovel, and were still able to collect about 70 grams of dust and stones. This was enough to exceed his mission goal of 60 grams. However, most of the sample was stuck inside.
Martinez was called to help with the demolition. His team was perplexed by the sticking fasteners and the limitations imposed by isolating the containers in sealed boxes. The space was too small for large tools. The screw lubricant may have contaminated the sample.
By January, engineers had created a rectangular metal clamp that attaches to the edge of the container, allowing workers to lower a screwdriver-like head into the clasp. On January 10th, they carefully turned the knob and finally got the screw to move. When the lid was removed, several scientists posed with metal clamps as their colleagues cheered, “Let’s go home!”
“It’s hard to put into words how much it meant to our team,” Martinez said.
Lanning said NASA has not yet announced the total mass of the samples recovered from Bennu. Every gram will help with research into the composition of the solar system’s early asteroids and the building blocks of life, she said.
Martinez said the research team is trying to diagnose why the two fasteners stuck, and the study will help NASA engineers learn more about how the components work on long space voyages. He said it was possible. For now, they’ll be amazed at how precious asteroid samples were saved thanks to the invention of a very sophisticated screwdriver.
“We are ready for other missions. [they] It’s going to happen,” Martinez said. “Until then, we’re going to have a lot of celebrating.”