The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, launched in September 2016, is now lower than a month away from bringing again samples from asteroid Bennu. NASA performed a press convention on Aug. 30 to preview the Sept. 24 touchdown on the Dugway Proving Floor in Utah.
To arrange for the touchdown, NASA performed an end-to-end capsule retrieval train on Tuesday, Aug. 29 at Dugway. The check capsule was set down onto the playa the place the OSIRIS-REx capsule is anticipated to land, and groups retrieved the check capsule utilizing the identical strategies, instruments, and procedures they may use on touchdown day.
On Wednesday, Aug. 30, a drop check was performed from 2.13 kilometers in altitude above floor stage. The check capsule was dropped from a helicopter and efficiently deployed its principal parachute. Rani Gran from NASA acknowledged that the check went properly with solely minor dragging of the chute and capsule by wind. This was the ultimate rehearsal earlier than the touchdown.
A closeup of the reproduction OSIRIS-REx pattern capsule that was drop examined earlier on Aug. 30. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
There are a number of maneuvers that the spacecraft wants to finish earlier than a choice is made for whether or not the pattern return capsule (SRC) is go for launch and touchdown. This resolution is scheduled for two:00 AM MDT (0800 UTC) on Sept. 24, and at present, it’s anticipated that the choice might be to proceed with the discharge.
After the choice is made to launch the capsule, the discharge command might be despatched to OSIRIS-REx from the Lockheed Martin Mission Help Space in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. After this command is distributed, the precise launch will happen round three hours later. There may be an extra hour accessible in that window if wanted.
The choice to launch the SRC hinges on three standards: security to people, capsule survivability, and touchdown accuracy. If there is a matter with the capsule’s touchdown trajectory, the separation of the capsule itself, or the spacecraft that will forestall the touchdown, there’s a contingency plan.
Animation displaying OSIRIS-REx simply earlier than pattern return capsule launch. (Credit score: NASA)
If a difficulty have been to stop capsule launch and touchdown, OSIRIS-REx would fly by Earth and troubleshoot the problem over the subsequent two years. One other alternative to launch the capsule and land at Dugway will current itself in 2025. Ought to this occur, nonetheless, OSIRIS-REx would fly previous the Solar, exposing the spacecraft to temperatures increased than the spacecraft was designed to face up to.
Groups are very assured that all the things might be to ensure that a touchdown on Sept. 24, and Lockheed Martin’s OSIRIS-REx program supervisor Sandy Freund famous that OSIRIS-REx has had an intensive check program. The OSIRIS-REx SRC itself is of the identical design that was used for the profitable restoration of the Stardust comet samples, and the design’s success on that mission was the explanation it was chosen for this flight.
A monitoring digicam much like one which might be used in the course of the OSIRIS-REx pattern capsule return. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
Additionally it is notable that climate situations at Dugway won’t trigger any postponement to the touchdown, even when situations are lower than ideally suited. For instance, in the course of the drop check, visibility was lowered on account of smoke from fires within the Pacific Northwest that moved into Utah. Regardless of the smoke, the drop may nonetheless be tracked by the sensors that might be used for the precise touchdown.
Infrared sensors are a part of the sensor suite that may monitor the spacecraft on touchdown day and may detect the capsule in darkness and thru smoke. Radar and optical sensors will even assist monitor the descending capsule. Even precipitation or thunderstorms wouldn’t delay the touchdown, although they may have an effect on when the capsule can be recovered.
As soon as the SRC is efficiently launched from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, it is going to take 4 hours for the capsule to succeed in Earth’s floor. The discharge can happen as much as one hour later if wanted. The SRC launch is at present scheduled to happen at 4:42 AM MDT (10:42 UTC) when OSIRIS-REx is roughly 107,800 kilometers from Earth, per NASA Goddard’s OSIRIS-REx venture supervisor Wealthy Burns. Curiously, different documentation states the discharge distance as 102,000 kilometers.
An infographic with the timeline for entry and touchdown of the pattern capsule for OSIRIS-REx. (Credit score: College of Arizona/Heather Roper)
The SRC, massing roughly 46 kilograms, is supplied with an accelerometer that may measure G-forces on the spacecraft, however is just not outfitted with any GPS electronics or cameras. The capsule could have its ablative PICA warmth protect dealing with the Earth because it cruises towards our house planet with its asteroid samples.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will maneuver off to 1 aspect to overlook Earth, with the maneuver scheduled for five:02 AM MDT (11:02 UTC). OSIRIS-REx will fly by our house planet at an altitude of roughly 780 kilometers earlier than embarking on the OSIRIS-APEX mission to the near-Earth asteroid Apophis. OSIRIS-APEX will fly by Apophis in 2029, shortly after the doubtless hazardous asteroid makes a detailed flyby of Earth.
After a number of hours of traversing the space from the discharge level to the Earth’s ambiance, the OSIRIS-REx pattern capsule will enter the ambiance at 8:42 AM MDT (14:42 UTC). Capsule entry might be at an altitude of round 132 kilometers, at a velocity of 44,498 kilometers per hour.
The SRC will endure forces of as much as 32 occasions Earth’s gravity (32 G) throughout its descent, which can take roughly 13 minutes from atmospheric entry to landing. One minute after entry, the capsule reaches peak heating of two,760 levels Celsius.
The touchdown ellipse for the OSIRIS-REx return capsule throughout the Dugway Proving Floor. (Credit score: NASA/USGS/Landsat 8)
Two minutes after reentry, the drogue chute will deploy at an altitude of roughly 31 kilometers above the floor. The spacecraft will enter the restricted airspace above the Dugway Proving Floor, which is roughly 3,642 sq. kilometers in measurement, or roughly the world of the US state of Rhode Island.
Because the proving floor and its airspace is over 138 kilometers southwest of Salt Lake Metropolis, and probably the most distant US Military base within the continental United States, it is a perfect location for the touchdown sequence. This distant location was one of many causes for the proving floor’s founding in 1942, because the US Military wanted a distant place to check chemical and organic weapons.
Inside the Dugway Proving Floor, the touchdown ellipse that OSIRIS-REx’s pattern capsule will use is an roughly 58-kilometer by 14-kilometer strip of land centered on a playa, or dry lakebed, which is a remnant of the traditional Lake Bonneville, which was as soon as virtually as massive as Lake Michigan.
The playa at Dugway Proving Floor, Utah the place the OSIRIS-REx pattern capsule is anticipated to land on Sept. 24, 2023. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
Whereas the capsule is beneath its drogue chute, OSIRIS-REx will make its closest method to Earth earlier than heading for Apophis. OSIRIS-REx’s closest method is anticipated to happen at 8:45 AM MDT (14:45 UTC).
5 minutes after OSIRIS-REx’s closest method to Earth, at 8:50 AM MDT (14:50 UTC), the pattern capsule will deploy its principal parachute at an altitude of 1,539 meters above the floor. 5 minutes after that, at 8:55 AM MDT (14:55 UTC) the capsule will contact down at a velocity of 11 miles per hour.
A Bell JetRanger taking off from Michael Military Airfield at Dugway Proving Floor on Aug. 30, 2023. This is without doubt one of the helicopters that might be concerned within the Sept. 24 OSIRIS-REx touchdown. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
As soon as the capsule touches down, the retrieval and curation course of will start. 4 helicopters, staging out of Michael Military Airfield, might be concerned in retrieval operations, with two of them instantly engaged on the retrieval. When the capsule is positioned, group members will take samples of the bottom the capsule landed on.
This step is important to catalog any contamination that might discover its manner into the asteroid samples. If something uncommon is famous throughout assessments on the asteroid samples, groups may test the asteroid samples for contaminates from the touchdown location. Personnel will even test for any unexploded ordnance close to the spacecraft after touchdown since Dugway is a army check vary.
Group members will safe the capsule to a cargo web, which might be slung below one of many helicopters. The helicopter will take the capsule away to be loaded onto a becoming outdoors the small hangar close to the Michael Military Airfield on the grounds of the Dugway set up.
The becoming that may take the OSIRIS-REx pattern container instantly into the transportable clear room. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
The capsule’s asteroid pattern container might be offloaded and transferred to a separate becoming which might be rolled into a transportable clear room particularly constructed for dealing with the OSIRIS-REx samples.
The samples might be related to a provide of nitrogen that may defend them from Earth’s ambiance. Moreover, the clear room, which is saved at a temperature of 20 levels Celsius, has an air strain barely above the air surrounding it to maintain mud and grime out.
The transportable clear room constructed particularly for the OSIRIS-REx venture. (Credit score: Justin Davenport for NSF/L2)
On the day after the touchdown, the samples, inside a specifically designed container, might be rolled right into a US Air Pressure C-17 cargo transport, which can take off from Michael Military Airfield certain for Houston, Texas. The Michael Military Airfield runway is constructed to accommodate massive cargo plane just like the C-17 and was designated as an emergency touchdown website for the Area Shuttle.
As soon as the C-17 arrives in Houston, the samples might be taken to a different clear room that has additionally been particularly constructed to deal with these samples from Bennu. This was accomplished to stop any cross-contamination from current lunar or asteroid samples. Johnson Area Middle (JSC) shops Apollo-era lunar samples together with meteorites from Antarctica and samples from the Genesis and Stardust missions.
A follow run for evaluation of the Bennu samples on the clear room constructed at JSC for the mission. (Credit score: NASA)
The Genesis mission to return samples of the photo voltaic wind had a parachute deployment failure and suffered a really exhausting touchdown when it returned to Earth in September 2004. Though the capsule broke into many fragments, some samples of the photo voltaic wind have been efficiently retrieved and analyzed.
Classes discovered have been utilized to Stardust and future pattern return missions, and Stardust was an entire success. There are contingency plans in place if one thing much like Genesis have been to occur to the OSIRIS-REx capsule, and the group believes that they will get helpful samples even within the worst-case state of affairs of a Genesis-like crash.
Tim Priser, Lockheed Martin’s chief engineer for OSIRIS-REx, talked about classes discovered from Genesis, saying “Take note of the small print and check such as you fly, fly it such as you check it. The polarity of the G-switches was efficiently and extensively examined for polarity on OSIRIS-REx.”
Bennu, composed of 12 PolyCam pictures collected on Dec. 2, 2018 by OSIRIS-REx. Bennu, like Apophis, is a probably hazardous asteroid. (Credit score: NASA/Goddard/College of Arizona)
Bennu is a carbonaceous “rubble pile” asteroid, and the chain of custody for these samples is very necessary. Earth is teeming with carbon-based life varieties, together with humanity, and scientists like OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dr. Dante Lauretta of the College of Arizona wish to know why that is so. It’s thought that asteroids like Bennu may have delivered key parts to Earth that now make-up all life varieties.
A recognized “chain of custody” differentiates samples taken instantly by spacecraft from meteorites that land on Earth after being blown off the floor of one other world. Meteorites are affected by interplay with Earth’s ambiance, whereas the samples of Bennu which might be in OSIRIS-REx are pristine and unbothered.
OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first-ever asteroid pattern return, however this isn’t the primary time samples have been returned instantly from an asteroid. The Japanese Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions have efficiently returned samples from asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, respectively.
Ryugu, as imaged by Hayabusa2. (Credit score: ISAS/JAXA)
JAXA and NASA have labored collectively intently on their respective asteroid pattern missions. The OSIRIS-REx group has obtained a pattern from Ryugu, which can be a carbonaceous asteroid. Whereas the OSIRIS-REx group will obtain 25 p.c of the OSIRIS-REx mission’s samples, Half of 1 p.c of the samples might be despatched to JAXA as a part of a pattern and scientist trade.
As well as, the Canadian Area Company will get 4 p.c of the samples, and a portion of the Johnson Area Middle curated samples might be despatched to White Sands, New Mexico, as a backup assortment. The same course of has been accomplished with the lunar samples from the Apollo missions. The remainder of the samples might be made publicly accessible to scientists world wide for evaluation, and a big portion might be curated to make sure availability for future generations of scientists.
As Kevin Righter, NASA’s deputy curation lead at JSC acknowledged concerning what they’ve discovered from JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission to Ryugu, “I believe getting a way for what this carbonaceous asteroid materials is like, dealing with it, figuring out what to anticipate, and what sorts of bodily results from the Bennu pattern, which has similarities in materials.”
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft “tagging” Bennu’s “rubble pile” floor in October 2020. (Credit score: NASA)
It’s anticipated that there might be an replace on Oct. 11 concerning the early outcomes from the OSIRIS-REx pattern return, and Dr. Lauretta expects to start out writing the primary paper on the samples by the tip of the yr. The American Geophysical Union, which is assembly in San Francisco this December, can be anticipated to function outcomes from the Bennu samples.
What’s extra, the Mars Pattern Return group can be working with the OSIRIS-REx groups on making use of finest practices and classes for the return of its samples from Mars, which is at present scheduled for 2031. In reality, the MSR capsule should be capable to survive a tough touchdown, and a “garden dart” method for returning the samples with no parachute is into account. That is being thought-about to eradicate the complexity of getting a parachute system on board the spacecraft.
An infographic displaying NASA’s present and future photo voltaic system missions. (Credit score: NASA)
As NASA and different area companies proceed to launch missions and discover the photo voltaic system, pattern return is turning into more and more necessary and potential with newer expertise, particularly for the Moon, asteroids, comets, and planetary moons. OSIRIS-REx would carry again the best amount of samples of any mission past the Moon thus far. A number of the samples may date from a time earlier than Earth was even fashioned.
OSIRIS-REx’s pattern return is the primary of three occasions this yr that NASA Headquarter’s program govt Melissa Morris referred to as “Asteroid Autumn.” The launch of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft to a metal-rich asteroid is scheduled for October and NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is ready to fly by asteroid “Dinkinesh” within the internal principal asteroid belt in November.
(Lead picture: The OSIRIS-REx coaching reproduction return capsule below its parachute in the course of the ultimate pre-landing rehearsal on Aug. 30, 2023. Credit score: NASA/Keegan Barber)
