OSIRIS-REx's asteroid pattern lands in Houston (pictures)

The asteroid pattern collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft simply skilled its second landing in solely two days.

The pattern — a stash of dust and gravel that the probe snagged from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 — touched down within the Utah desert on Sunday (Sept. 24), thrilling mission crew members and scientists around the globe.

However the asteroid pattern stayed within the Beehive State for only a day earlier than boarding a airplane to its remaining vacation spot, which it reached in the present day (Sept. 25).

“Welcome to Houston, OSIRIS-REx! The asteroid pattern arrived in the present day in Texas the place it is going to be curated and preserved by our crew right here at Johnson. The knowledge collected might assist scientists around the globe examine planetary formation, the origins of life and the way asteroids may impression Earth,” NASA’s Johnson Area Heart (JSC), which relies in Houston, mentioned in the present day in a post on X (previously Twitter).

Associated: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx lands samples of asteroid Bennu to Earth after historic 4-billion-mile journey

three workers carry a silver crate off the back of a cargo plane. — OSIRIS-REx collected the sample from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. (Image credit: NASA/JSC)

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and arrived at Bennu, a 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) near-Earth asteroid, in December 2018. The probe studied Bennu up shut for 22 months, then swooped in to seize a pattern — marking the very first time a NASA probe had managed to gather items of an asteroid in house.

That dive revealed Bennu’s floor to be surprisingly spongy; OSIRIS-REx sank far into the asteroid earlier than backing away to security.

OSIRIS-REx left Bennu in Might 2021, starting a protracted journey again to Earth. At 6:42 a.m. EDT (1042 GMT) on Sunday, the probe launched its pattern capsule, which got here right down to Earth on the U.S. Division of Protection’s Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary about 4 hours later — simply as deliberate.

The Bennu pattern will now make its solution to a newly constructed curation facility at JSC managed by the company’s Astromaterials Analysis and Exploration Science division.

The OSIRIS-REx science crew — which incorporates greater than 200 individuals based mostly at 35 establishments around the globe — will then examine the pattern for about two years in an effort to satisfy the mission’s fundamental science objectives. Because the above JSC publish famous, these objectives embrace higher understanding how the photo voltaic system shaped and developed and the function carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu could have performed in delivering life’s constructing blocks to Earth.

The science crew can have entry to about 25% of the Bennu materials, which is believed to weigh about 8.8 ounces (250 grams). 4 p.c of the pattern will go to the Canadian Area Company, which supplied OSIRIS-REx’s laser altimeter instrument.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) will get 0.5% of the fabric, as a part of a cope with NASA that features collaboration between OSIRIS-REx and JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission, which returned a small pattern of the asteroid Ryugu to Earth in December 2020.

The remaining 70% of the Bennu pattern will stay at JSC “for examine by scientists not but born, utilizing applied sciences not but invented, to reply elementary questions in regards to the photo voltaic system,” in line with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return press kit.

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