OSIRIS-REx delivered its payload — and then some
OUR FEBRUARY 2022 Top 10 list notes that on May 10, 2021, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, SecurityRegolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission had turned toward home following its collection of material from the nearEarth asteroid Bennu.
Last year, that effort came to fruition. Just before 9 a.m. MDT on Sept. 24,
2023, a beautiful sight appeared in the skies above Utah: the craft’s samplereturn capsule (SRC) safely falling to Earth beneath its broad, orange-andwhite striped parachute. The capsule, which had been released just hours earlier when the spacecraft was 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth, landed on target at the U.S. Air Force’s Utah
Test and Training Range.
The next day, the SRC flew via cargo plane to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where a team waited to catalog and disassemble the canister and its attached sampling mechanism, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM). These were first placed inside sealed “gloveboxes,” preventing the samples from being exposed to Earth’s atmosphere.
It was slow going: The TAGSAM and canister lid were coated in so much extra material that collecting and cataloging it before the canister itself could be accessed required exquisite care. It was “the very best ‘problem’ to have,” said deputy OSIRIS-REx curation lead Christopher Snead in a statement. It’s also a “problem” that researchers had anticipated, given the material seen overflowing from the TAGSAM head following the collection maneuver Oct. 20, 2020, when the TAGSAM sank some 20 inches (50 centimeters) into the asteroid.
By Oct. 11, 2023, NASA hadn’t yet opened the canister. But the agency
revealed the results of an initial analysis of the excess material: Bennu is rich in carbon and hydrated clays, compounds that contain significant water. This means organic molecules — the building blocks of life — may also be present. Researchers also found sulfides, a necessary component of amino acids.
These results bode well for scientists interested in the abundance and role of such materials in the early solar system and the development of life on Earth — and potentially elsewhere. Asteroids provide the perfect starting point for study, as they both contain pristine material that dates to the solar system’s birth and are thought to be the main vehicle for delivering many elements, including water, to the young Earth.
NASA collected 2.48 ounces
(70.3 grams) from the hardware alone, exceeding the mission’s goal of retrieving 2.12 ounces (60 g) from Bennu before the sample proper was ever accessed. And with its precious cargo dropped off, the spacecraft is now headed to the nearEarth asteroid Apophis, which it will study up close starting in April 2029. Accordingly, the craft has a new name: OSIRIS-APEX, for APophis EXplorer.