The largest sample ever collected from an asteroid in space, and the first for NASA, landed in the Utah desert Sunday after a fiery final descent through Earth’s atmosphere, seven years after the mission’s launch.
“Touchdown of the Osiris-Rex sample return capsule. A journey of a billion miles to asteroid Bennu and back has come to an end,” a commentator said on NASA’s live video webcast of the landing.
The sample, collected in 2020 from Bennu, is estimated by the US space agency to contain some 250 grams (nine ounces) of material, far more than two previous asteroid specimens brought back by Japanese missions.
Scientists have high hopes for the sample, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.
Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250 grams) of dust from its rocky surface.
Even that small amount, NASA says, should “help us better understand the types of asteroids that could threaten Earth” and cast light “on the earliest history of our solar system,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
“This sample return is really historic,” NASA scientist Amy Simon told AFP. “This is going to be the biggest sample we’ve brought back since the Apollo moon rocks” were returned to Earth.
But the capsule’s return will require “a dangerous maneuver,” she acknowledged.
Osiris-Rex released the capsule early Sunday — from an altitude of more than 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) — some four hours before it lands.
The fiery passage through the atmosphere will come only in the last 13 minutes, as the capsule hurtles downward at a speed of more than 27,000 miles per hour, with temperatures of up to 5,000 Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius).
Its rapid descent, monitored by army sensors, will be slowed by two successive parachutes. Should they fail to deploy correctly, a “hard landing” would follow.
If it had appeared that the target zone (37 miles by 9 miles) might be missed, NASA controllers could decide at the last moment not to release the capsule.
But all systems are go, as NASA’s Planetary Science Division posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Osiris-Rex released the capsule with the asteroid sample at 1042 GMT.
“The capsule will plummet through space for four hours, enter the atmosphere over California and land about 13 minutes later in Utah,” it said.
The probe, having successfully released its cargo, fired its engines and shifted course away from Earth, NASA said, “on its way” for a date with another asteroid, known as Apophis.
Scientists predict it will come within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029.
– Japanese samples
Once the tire-sized capsule touches down in Utah, a team in protective masks and gloves will place it in a net to be airlifted by helicopter to a temporary “clean room” nearby.
NASA wants this done quickly and carefully to avoid any contamination of the sample with desert sands, skewing test results.
On Monday the sample is to be flown by plane to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, the box will be opened in another “clean room.”
NASA plans to announce its first results at a news conference October 11.
Most of the sample will be conserved for study by future generations. Roughly one-fourth will be immediately used in experiments, and a small amount will be sent to mission partners Japan and Canada.
Japan had earlier given NASA a few grains from asteroid Ryugu, after bringing 0.2 ounces of dust to Earth in 2020 during the Hayabusa-2 mission. Ten years before, it had brought back a microscopic quantity from another asteroid.
But the sample from Bennu is much larger, allowing for significantly more testing, Simon said.
– Earth’s origin story
Asteroids are composed of the original materials of the solar system, dating back some 4.5 billion years, and have remained relatively intact.
They “can give us clues about how the solar system formed and evolved,” said Osiris-Rex program executive Melissa Morris.
“It’s our own origin story.”
By striking Earth’s surface, “we do believe asteroids and comets delivered organic material, potentially water, that helped life flourish here on Earth,” Simon said.
Scientists believe Bennu, about 500 meters (1,640 feet) in diameter, is rich in carbon — a building block of life on Earth — and contains water molecules locked in minerals.
Bennu surprised scientists in 2020 when the probe, during its brief contact with the asteroid’s surface, sank into the soil, revealing an unexpectedly low density, like a children’s pool filled with plastic balls.
Understanding its composition could come in handy in the — distant — future.
For there is a slight, but non-zero, chance (one in 2,700) that Bennu could collide catastrophically with Earth, though not until 2182.
But NASA last year successfully deviated the course of an asteroid by crashing a probe into it in a test, and it might at some point need to repeat that exercise — but with much higher stakes.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - AFP)