OSIRIS-REx was launched on 8 September 2016, flew past Earth on 22 September 2017, and rendezvoused with Bennu on 3 December 2018. It spent the next several months analyzing the surface to find a suitable site from which to extract a sample. On 12 December 2019, NASA announced the first sampling site, known as Nightingale. It is expected to return with its sample to Earth on 24 September 2023. The material returned will enable scientists to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System.
About OSIRIS-REx in brief
OSIRIS-REx was launched on 8 September 2016, flew past Earth on 22 September 2017, and rendezvoused with Bennu on 3 December 2018. It spent the next several months analyzing the surface to find a suitable site from which to extract a sample. On 12 December 2019, NASA announced the first sampling site, known as Nightingale. It is expected to return with its sample to Earth on 24 September 2023. Unfortunately, the flap that should have closed the sampler head after collection was jammed open by larger rock samples, allowing some of the collected sample to leak out after collection. NASA is confident that they were able to retain somewhere between 400 g and over a kg – well in excess of the 60 g minimum target mass. If successful, OSIR ISREx will be the first United States spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid. The cost of the mission is approximately US$800 million, not including the Atlas V launch vehicle, which is about US$183. 5 million. The Japanese probe Hayabusa returned samples from 25143 Itokawa in 2010, and Hayabusha2 will return from 162173 Ryugu in December 2020. The mission is the third planetary science mission selected in the New Frontiers program, after Juno and New Horizons. The science team includes members from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy. The spacecraft will land with a parachute at the Utah Test and Training Range in 2023 before being transported to the Johnson Space Center for processing in a dedicated research facility.
The material returned will enable scientists to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System, its initial stages of planet formation, and the source of organic compounds that led to the formation of life on Earth. The sample will be returned to Earth in a 46 kg capsule similar to that which returned the samples of a comet 81PWild on the Stardust spacecraft. The return trip to Earth will be shorter and the capsule will land in September 20 23. The launch was declared ‘exactly perfect’ by the mission’s principal investigator, Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona. On 28 December 2016, the spacecraft successfully performed its first deep space maneuver to change its velocity by 431 ms using an additional 354kg of fuel. On 18 January 2017, following further refining of its thrusters, OS IRIS-rex fired its smaller thrusters for a further refined course following its further firing of thrusters on its further course. It was about 5kms (41kms) away from Earth when it made its first hyperbolic escape speed from Earth was about 41kms. On 28 January 2017 the spacecraft performed its second deep space manoeuvre to change the spacecraft’s velocity to 431 ms (431 m/s) The spacecraft is now on its way to Earth and will return with a 46kg capsule to the Earth in September 2022. It will be followed by a second mission to the moon in 2024.
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This page is based on the article OSIRIS-REx published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
