Dropping a capsule from a probe is a bit like playing darts – but on a basketball court, says NASA manager Rich Burns. The NASA probe is supposed to be at an altitude of around 102,000 kilometers Osiris Rex on Sunday released the sample from the asteroid Bennu over the desert of the US state of Utah. Hours later, the capsule will enter the Earth’s atmosphere protected by a heat shield and land around 13 minutes later with the help of parachutes in an area approximately 58 by 14 kilometers in size. “It’s kind of like throwing a dart across a basketball court and hitting the bullseye on the other side,” Burns says.
If everything works out, it would be the first sample of an asteroid successfully brought to Earth in NASA’s history – and probably the largest such sample ever taken. “A piece of solar system history,” as Nasa scientist Nicola Fox says. She and her colleagues estimate that there are around 250 grams of dust and debris in the capsule, which has a diameter of around 81 centimeters and weighs around 46 kilograms.
Even if the risk of impact is low, NASA considers “Bennu” to be one of the most dangerous asteroids
2005 was the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa landed on an asteroid. In 2010, it brought the first soil samples ever collected from such a celestial body to Earth. There have been other flights to asteroids, but no other probe has yet brought material back to Earth.
Already taking the sample Osiris Rex in October 2020 was a complicated and spectacular maneuver: the probe, which was launched from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in 2016, had temporarily left its place in Bennu’s orbit and approached it to within a few meters. Using a kind of robotic arm, the spacecraft touched the asteroid’s surface for about five seconds, expelling pressurized nitrogen to stir up sample material, which the probe then sucked up.
Asteroid Bennu seen from the Osiris-Rex probe.
(Photo: AP/AP)
After landing, the sample will be taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for examination. The deep black Bennu, named after an ancient Egyptian deity, has a diameter of around 550 meters and could come quite close to Earth in a good 150 years. Even if the risk of impact is very low, NASA counts Bennu one of the most dangerous asteroids currently known – and therefore wants to research it in detail.
The scientists also hope that it will cost around a billion dollars Osiris Rex-Mission findings about the formation of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, because asteroids are remnants of it. At the beginning of October psyche the next NASA probe is already heading off to an asteroid.
It’s about six meters long and weighs 2,100 kilograms Osiris Rex-Probe has already been assigned new tasks. After being dropped, it should fly directly to the next asteroid, this time Apophis. According to calculations, the asteroid with a diameter of around 370 meters will fly past Earth at a distance of around 32,000 kilometers in 2029 and could therefore be studied up close for the first time. Osiris Rex also gets a new name for the follow-up mission: Osiris Apex.