Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Here’s how NASA will drop off a sample of an asteroid

Georgina Torbet
By

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scooped up a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020, and in May 2021 the spacecraft headed back to Earth to drop that sample off. This week. the spacecraft performed a trajectory correction maneuver to keep it headed toward Earth, where it is scheduled to arrive in September 2023.

OSIRIS-REx Delivers Asteroid Bennu Samples to Earth

NASA has also shared more details on how exactly the spacecraft will deliver the asteroid sample to Earth, as this isn’t a simple process. OSIRIS-REx isn’t designed to be able to handle the incredible heat, friction, and other forces that traveling through Earth’s atmosphere requires so it doesn’t have a way to land on the surface. Instead, it will shoot a capsule filled with the asteroid sample into the atmosphere and only this capsule will arrive at the surface.

An illustration of OSIRIS-REx returning its sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth. The sample return capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere, cross the Western U.S., deploy its parachute, and touch down at the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert. From there, the capsule will be flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where its samples of asteroid Bennu will be curated, distributed, and studied for decades to come.
An illustration of OSIRIS-REx returning its sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth.  NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

This maneuever will be tricky too, as Mike Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explained in a statement.” If the capsule is angled too high, it will skip off the atmosphere,” Moreau said. “Angled too low, it will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.”

Recommended Videos

This is part of the reason that the spacecraft needs to make these trajectory maneuvers, to ensure that it ends up in exactly the right place in September of next year to be able to jettison the capsule at the right angle.

Related

“Over the next year, we will gradually adjust the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to target the spacecraft closer to Earth,” said Daniel Wibben, trajectory and maneuver design lead with KinetX Inc., which is the company responsible for navigating the spacecraft. “We have to cross Earth’s orbit at the time that Earth will be at that same location.”

The recent trajectory maneuver was the first performed by the spacecraft on the return leg of its journey, with further maneuvers scheduled for July of next year. Once the capsule has been released into the atmosphere, it will slow itself with a parachute as it descends. The capsule will hopefully land in an exact planned location at the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert, from where it can be collected by the Air Force and the Army, then taken to facilities for scientific investigation.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA automated system predicts asteroid impact over Germany
This map shows the location where the small asteroid 2024 BX1 harmlessly impacted Earth’s atmosphere over Germany, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Berlin, on Jan. 21. A NASA system called Scout predicted the impact time and site within 1 second and about 330 feet (100 meters).

Earth is frequently bombarded by small asteroids, which burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. However, identifying and tracking these asteroids is an important step in protecting the Earth against the threat of larger and potentially more dangerous impacts. NASA recently predicted the impact of a small asteroid that struck Germany using its impact prediction system, Scout.

"A small asteroid about 3 feet (1 meter) in size disintegrated harmlessly over Germany on Sunday, Jan. 21, at 1:32 a.m. local time (CET)," NASA wrote in an update. "At 95 minutes before it impacted Earth’s atmosphere, NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system, which monitors data on potential asteroid discoveries, gave advance warning as to where and when the asteroid would impact. This is the eighth time in history that a small Earth-bound asteroid has been detected while still in space, before entering and disintegrating in our atmosphere."

Read more
NASA cracks open its first sample from an asteroid, foiling two sticky screws
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx curation engineer, Neftali Hernandez, attaches one of the tools developed to help remove two final fasteners that prohibited complete disassembly of the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head that holds the remainder of material collected from asteroid Bennu. Engineers on the team, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, developed new tools that freed the fasteners on Jan. 10.

NASA returned its first sample of an asteroid to Earth last year, landing a sample collected from asteroid Bennu in the Utah desert in September. Researchers were able to extract 70 grams of material from the canister that had been carried back to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, making this the largest asteroid sample ever brought to Earth. The scientists involved knew there was more material inside the mechanism, but getting at it proved difficult -- until now, as NASA has announced it has now managed to open up the troublesome mechanism.

You might think it would be an easy job to unscrew a canister and dump out the material inside, but extraction was a lengthy and technical process. That's because the focus was on preserving as much of the precious sample as possible, trying not to let any of the particles get lost. The issue was with two of the 25 fasteners that held the sample inside the collection mechanism.  The mechanism is kept inside a glove box to prevent any loss, and there were only certain tools available that worked with the glove box. So when the fasteners wouldn't open with the tools they had, the team couldn't just go at them with any other tool.

Read more
NASA shows off its experimental, quiet supersonic aircraft, the X-59
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the apron outside Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility at dawn in Palmdale, California. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to address one of the primary challenges to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.

NASA has shown off its new quiet supersonic aircraft, the X-59. Created along with Lockheed Martin, the aircraft is designed to reduce the sonic boom created by traveling faster than the speed of sound to what the agency calls a "sonic thump." Supersonic flights over land are currently forbidden due to the noise disturbance they cause, and the X-59 is an experimental aircraft aimed at reducing this noise to something more tolerable to those on the ground.

At an event today, Friday January 12, NASA debuted the aircraft ahead of testing. Its first flight is scheduled for later this year. In a statement, NASA said that it aims to use this one-of-a-kind airplane to gather data and pave the way for future commercial supersonic aircraft.

Read more