NASA’s OSIRIS-REx kisses asteroid Bennu

NIRMAL YESODA

Space experts had previously found that asteroid Bennu is a 500-meter wide space rock that could hit the earth in the 22nd century. To study more about this alleged doomsday space rock, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx probe four years ago. The spacecraft touched down on the asteroid on October 20 to collect precious dirt from the space rock’s surface in an operation 330 million kilometres far from Earth.

At 2212 GMT touchdown was declared at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver Colorado. The historic mission was 12 years in the making and rested on a critical 16 second period where the spacecraft performed a delicate autonomous manoeuvre to grab its payload: at least 60 grams (two ounces), or a candy-bar sized amount of surface material that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system.

If Osiris-Rex successfully comes home in September 2023, it will have collected the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

“We think we actually might be coming back with a baby picture of what the solar system was like, of what our chemistry was like, billions of years ago,” NASA scientist Michelle Thaller said.

According to NASA officials, the OSIRIS-REx will perform a crucial descent today, and upon nearing the space rock, it will attempt a vital touch and go. It should be noted that signals from the spacecraft will take at least 18 minutes to reach the controllers on earth, and as a result, all maneuvers of the probe are programmed ahead of time.

Initial images of OSIRIS-REx will help to identify whether the scooping process is successful or not. However, to know the exact amount of regolith collected from the asteroid’s surface, experts should compare the spacecraft’s mass before and after the sample collecting process.

“It will be four and a half hours of anxiousness,” said Beth Buck, OSIRIS-REx mission operations program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, in a recent press conference.

Even though the sample will be collected today, it will take at least 10 days to know the outcome of the process. NASA is apparently planning to collect at least 50 grams of dust from the asteroid’s surface, but experts are confident of collecting nearly two kilograms of regolith, which could completely fill the capsule.

The spacecraft is expected to rocket the precious cargo back to earth by September 2023 for further analysis, and experts believe that it could help to know more about the asteroids.