After Seven Years, Sample Collected From Asteroid Finally Returns to Earth (nasa.gov) 34
OSIRIS-REx weighs 4,650 pounds (or 2,110 kg). On September 8th of 2016, NASA first launched the spacecraft on its 3.8-billion mile mission to land on an asteroid and retrieve a sample.
That sample has just returned.
Throughout Sunday morning, NASA tweeted historic updates from the sample's landing site in Utah. "We've spotted the #OSIRISREx capsule on the ground," they announced about 80 minutes ago (including a 23-second video clip). "The parachute has separated, and the helicopters are arriving at the site. We're ready to recover that sample!"
UPI notes that the capsule "reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it," describing its payload as "a 250-gram dust sample."
15 minutes later NASA shared footage of "the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system." A recovery team approached the capsule to perform an environmental safety sweep confirming there were no hazardous gas.
"The impossible became possible," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The Guardian reports he confirmed the capsule "brought something extraordinary — the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth.
"It's going to help scientists investigate planet formation, it's going to improve our understanding of the asteroids that could possibly impact the earth and it will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation."
"This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that have inspired us, things that unite us...
"The mission continues with incredible science and analysis to come. But I want to thank you all, for everybody that made this Osiris-Rex mission possible."
Professor Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists who will study the sample, told the Guardian that he was excited to see the sample heading to the clean room at Johnson Space Center. "So much new science to come!"
And that 4,650-pound spacecraft is still hurtling through space. 20 minutes after delivering its sample, the craft " fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to asteroid Apophis," NASA reports. The name of its new mission? OSIRIS-APEX. Roughly 1,000 feet wide, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid's close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid's orbit, spin rate, and surface.
That sample has just returned.
Throughout Sunday morning, NASA tweeted historic updates from the sample's landing site in Utah. "We've spotted the #OSIRISREx capsule on the ground," they announced about 80 minutes ago (including a 23-second video clip). "The parachute has separated, and the helicopters are arriving at the site. We're ready to recover that sample!"
UPI notes that the capsule "reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it," describing its payload as "a 250-gram dust sample."
15 minutes later NASA shared footage of "the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system." A recovery team approached the capsule to perform an environmental safety sweep confirming there were no hazardous gas.
"The impossible became possible," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The Guardian reports he confirmed the capsule "brought something extraordinary — the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth.
"It's going to help scientists investigate planet formation, it's going to improve our understanding of the asteroids that could possibly impact the earth and it will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation."
"This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that have inspired us, things that unite us...
"The mission continues with incredible science and analysis to come. But I want to thank you all, for everybody that made this Osiris-Rex mission possible."
Professor Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists who will study the sample, told the Guardian that he was excited to see the sample heading to the clean room at Johnson Space Center. "So much new science to come!"
And that 4,650-pound spacecraft is still hurtling through space. 20 minutes after delivering its sample, the craft " fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to asteroid Apophis," NASA reports. The name of its new mission? OSIRIS-APEX. Roughly 1,000 feet wide, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid's close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid's orbit, spin rate, and surface.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry, it will spread.
Re: (Score:2)
The nanobots will be coming out of hibernation as we speak.
Re: (Score:1)
The nanobots will be coming out of hibernation as we speak.
Yeah, they read the Iliad too.
Re: (Score:1)
My bad... The Iliad ends before the story of the Trojan Horse.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, it will spread.
And soon we'll have to send in the USAF to nuke the area to prevent the disease from spreading...
Plot line from the 1971 movie The Andromeda Strain
So the truth is ... what is old really is new again.
Re:That's expensive. (Score:5, Insightful)
"a 250-gram dust sample."
All that effort and expense. Couldn't they retrieve a bigger sample, or perhaps more than one of them?
Next time they'll send one of these [sandboxdigger.com] along with a bucket. They can operate it from long distance.
250 grams is over half a pound (8.8 ounces). Considering all the mechanisms involved to get even this much, to whine about not getting more shows how out of touch people are.
Re:That's expensive. (Score:5, Funny)
Are those troy ounces or avoirdupois ounces?
Re: (Score:3)
250g sounds like a suspiciously round number. Is that just the expected amount based on the size of the sample container, or was it measured?
The Japanese Hayabusa craft returned less than a gram, so however much they have it's likely to be significantly more than we have had before.
Re:That's expensive. (Score:5, Informative)
250g sounds like a suspiciously round number. Is that just the expected amount based on the size of the sample container, or was it measured?
Here's the article from when they collected the sample. They were looking for 60 grams, but because the "soil" of Bennu was so loose, they go more than they bargained for [cnn.com]. So much, that the lid of the containment vessel was blocked from fully closing and they were losing material into space.
Here is a series of pictures [nasa.gov] taken by the craft during the sampling. The second series of pictures shows how much debris was thrown up when the nitrogen gas was released. The sampling head itself is a foot across so 8 ounces of loose soil isn't out of the question. This article [space.com] gives an estimated range of 5.2 ounces to 12.4 ounces, based on NASA's calculations.
To minimize sample loss, the mission team decided to stow the Bennu material in the probe's return capsule as quickly as possible. This new plan skipped a previously planned maneuver that was supposed to spin OSIRIS-REx around a bit, in order to gather data that would allow team members to estimate the mass of the collected sample.
The mission team arrived at an estimate by other means, but it's far from precise. The number is 8.8 oz (250 g), plus or minus 3.6 oz (101 g). So, the sample capsule could contain as much as 12.4 oz (351 g), or as little as 5.2 oz (149 g).
Looks like most articles used the middle value.
Re: (Score:2)
"a suspiciously round number"
In some situations a round number would be suspicious, but in others an exact number would be suspicious.
Have you considered what type of situation this is?
Re:That's expensive. (Score:5, Informative)
Science can be done with micrograms of material. 70% of the returned material will be locked away for later scientists to work on.
We can do great science with very, very small amounts of material
Re:That's expensive. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Energy is a big problem. It takes energy to lift the rocket from Earth. It takes a lot more to go fast enough to keep it from coming right back down, and then metric buttloads more to match velocity with an asteroid. Ignoring how you collect the material, you then need even more energy to get your payload back to Earth (though you can use atmospheric braking and then a parachute to save yourself some fuel.
The more you want to collect, the more massive the spacecraft required, and the more difficult to la
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of research can be done with that amount of material. It's been decades since we last landed on the moon and we still have a huge amount of lunar regolith available for study. (tho we certainly brought a lot back, but it's been a long time that scientists have been chipping away at the supply)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. Two for the price of one.
(Additional fees for shipping and handling apply)
Re: (Score:2)
It's gonna really blow your mind to learn that JAXA's Huyabusa2 mission only returned about 5 grams [japantimes.co.jp]. And before that, the Stardust mission only managed about 1 milligram [nasa.gov]! And both of those were hailed as wild successes!
This is the largest sample return since Apollo. We got a few hundred kg from that program, and preciously curate it [youtube.com]. But 'all that effort and expense' for Apollo was a few hundred bi
Soon it will be released! (Score:2)
Largest sample received (Score:5, Funny)
The dinosaurs might dispute "the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Survivors' bias.
Re: (Score:2)
The dinosaurs might dispute "the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth."
<humor type=statistics>That asteroid involved an entire population, not a sample.</humor>
And what did we learn from this? (Score:2)
Well, I do look forward to an age where we're mining asteroids for the elements, so this is a good start.
Re:What you need to learn. (Score:5, Interesting)
After seven years we scratched a rock flying by with a kite and caught some dust.
And then we returned that dust from an 8 billion mile round trip back to earth. Considering this mission cost 0.00007% of the yearly Federal budget ($1.16B over 9 years, $128M out of $1.6T yearly discretionary) I am perfectly impressed with the money spent. Let's do some more.
Re: (Score:2)
"Everywhere I go, I see teachers in Ferraris, research scientists drinking champagne. I tried to drink a Coke on the bus and they took away my pass!" [frinkiac.com]
I'm sorry you find life so goddamn miserable. Sounds depressing.
Re: (Score:2)
Price per gram on this sure as fuck beats out the price per gram for antimatter generation. I'll take this daily.
Landed right next to dirt road (Score:2)
...in the desert. What's the chance of that? Conspiracists will have a field day.
Really cool. (Score:3)
I don't care what anyone says, this is really cool, and anyone who doesn't think so needs to turn in their space-nerd card, if they have one.
An Andromeda Strain opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully things will fare better than they did in The Andromeda Strain. [imdb.com]
Over at Varda Space Industries ... (Score:3)
I imagine they're still rather annoyed [slashdot.org].