saucer-shaped capsule transporting asteroid fragments The spacecraft, which may contain clues about the birth of the solar system, crashed into Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday, parachuted to its target and landed in Utah, ending a seven-year, 4-billion-mile drama. completed a voyage.
A 110-pound, 31-inch-wide sample return capsule loaded with half a pound of rock and soil taken from the 2020 asteroid known as Bennu, released from the OSIRIS-REx mothership four hours ago, revealed the planet’s identifiable planet. It crashed at the top. 132 miles in the air, 10:42 a.m. EDT, at a blistering speed of 47,700 miles per hour.
NASA
For the next two minutes, the capsule’s heat shield withstood re-entry temperatures of over 5,000 degrees and braking forces 32 times the force of gravity as it decelerated rapidly in hellish atmospheric friction as it headed to a test and training range in Utah. The aircraft headed towards landing. West of Salt Lake City.
In 2004, a similar capsule crashed in Utah after its parachute failed to open, as scientists and engineers held their breath. The Osiris-Rex sample return capsule survived the fire test and probably deployed a stabilizing drogue parachute at an altitude of 20 miles.
The 24-foot-wide main capsule was expected to deploy and inflate at an altitude of 5,000 feet, but NASA said it actually deployed at 20,000 feet. That may have contributed to the slightly earlier-than-expected touchdown, but in any case, the main chute appears to have lowered the sample return capsule to an expected 11 mph landing at 10:52 a.m. EDT. This is the final stage of nailing. A painful descent.
Recovery crews from prime contractor Lockheed Martin and the Utah Test and Training Range arrived on scene within minutes to document the condition of the capsule and detect any damage that could result in contamination of the original sample inside. I looked for any signs of.
Also accompanying us will be principal investigator Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona. He is part of a team assigned to characterize the surrounding environment in order to thoroughly document the chemical composition of the landing zone. Just in case.
NASA
However, there were no obvious problems and the capsule was intact, with no signs of damage that could have allowed terrestrial contaminants to get inside. Once that is confirmed, a helicopter will take the capsule to a temporary, air-filtered “clean room” to begin disassembly and prepare to transport the samples to a more sophisticated lab at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday. I arranged it.
Lauretta said the samples are the largest collection of extraterrestrial material since the Apollo moon mission and are representative of the raw materials that formed the sun and subsequent planets 4.5 billion years ago.
“We’re going back to the early days of our solar system, looking for clues about why Earth is a habitable world. This rare gem lies in outer space, where there are oceans and a protective atmosphere. ” he said. “We think all of this material was introduced[to Earth]by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in the formation of our planetary system.
NASA
“And, of course, the biggest question, the one that drives my scientific investigation, is the origin of life. What is life? How did life originate? Why was Earth the place where it originated? … We believe that the You’re bringing material back with you.”
Two Japanese spacecraft returned small amounts of samples from the asteroid in 2010 and 2020, but OSIRIS-REx (a complex acronym that stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer) was created by NASA This is the first such mission carried by the
After initial analysis in Houston, NASA plans to share Bennu samples with researchers around the world.
NASA
“This is a gift to the world,” Lauretta said. “We have labs on four continents and 16 time zones, hundreds of researchers, and more than 60 labs preparing to acquire this material, leading to the main mission of OSIRIS-REx. We are ready to launch our final science campaign.”
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and sample return capsule, equipped with three cameras, two spectrometers, a laser altimeter, and an X-ray imaging system developed by university students, will fly aboard the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on September 8. launched from Cape Canaveral. 2016.
To reach Bennu, which orbits on a plane tilted 6 degrees from Earth, OSIRIS-REx circled the Sun and then sped up for a gravity-assisted flyby of Earth on September 22, 2017. The spacecraft eventually slipped into orbit around Bennu. At the end of 2018.
Scientists were stunned by what they discovered. Roughly as tall and wide as the Empire State Building, Bennu is a loosely compacted rubble that behaves more like a fluid, rather than a more typical celestial body with fine-grained soil and rock on top of a more or less solid interior. than solid which turned out to be a pile of.
After extensive mapping to identify safe sample collection points, Osiris-Rex will slowly descend toward the surface on October 20, 2020, and collect its pie-pan-shaped “touch-and-go sample” “Gathering Mechanism” (TAGSAM) was set up at the end. 11 feet long robotic arm.
Upon contact, the rover fires a jet of nitrogen gas around the 12-inch-wide interior of TAGSAM, stirring up the soil and small rocks beneath it and blowing some of the material into a collection filter before the rover heads off on its way. I turned around and retreated.
NASA
“It behaved very fluid-like and had no resistance to the downward movement of the spacecraft,” Lauretta said in an interview. “We sank about 50 centimeters (20 inches). If we hadn’t fired the back-away thrusters, I think we would have just crashed into the asteroid and disappeared.”
After retreating from Bennu, the TAGSAM mechanism and its precious samples were stowed inside the OSIRIS-REx return capsule in preparation for the long-distance return to Earth and Sunday’s dramatic atmospheric re-entry.
After orbiting to align with the Utah landing site, the OSIRIS-REx mothership released the sample return capsule at 6:42 a.m. EDT. Once the capsule arrived safely, the OSIRIS-REX spacecraft fired its thrusters 20 minutes later, ensuring a safe exit approximately 784 miles from Earth.
The “turn around” maneuver put the spacecraft on track for a close encounter with the asteroid Apophis in 2029.
Approximately 1,200 feet in diameter, Apophis is scheduled to come within just 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029, a very near miss in astronomical terms. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, now known as the Osiris-Apophis Explorer, will brake its orbit around Apophis shortly after the asteroid passes Earth and begin long-term observations.