A NASA space capsule, OSIRIS-REx, carrying a sample of stony material collected three years ago from the surface of an asteroid hurtled toward Earth this weekend, heading for a catastrophic tumble through the atmosphere and a parachute landing in the Utah desert on Sunday.
Weather forecasts were favorable, and NASA officials announced at a news conference on Friday that the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx was on track to release the sample-return capsule for final descent as planned, with no more changes to its flight path required.
Program manager at Lockheed Martin, which designed and built the spacecraft, mission management expect a “spot-on” touchdown on the US military’s enormous Utah Test and Training Range west of Salt Lake City, according to Sandra Freund.
The round, gumdrop-shaped capsule is set to land via parachute around 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT), approximately 13 minutes after blasting through the top of the atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, capping a seven-year journey.
If successful, the OSIRIS-REx mission, a collaboration between NASA and scientists at the University of Arizona, would be the third and largest asteroid sample ever returned to Earth for investigation, following two comparable flights by Japan’s space agency in the previous 13 years.
OSIRIS-REx obtained its sample from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid identified in 1999 and designated as a “near-Earth object” since it passes close to our planet every six years. Scientists put the odds of it striking Earth at 1-in-2,700 in the late 22nd century.
Bennu: A cosmic time capsule with clues to Earth’s origins
Bennu is a small asteroid, measuring about 1,600 feet (500 meters) in diameter – barely broader than the Empire State Building is tall – yet it is nothing compared to the devastating Chicxulub asteroid, which slammed Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.
Like other asteroids, Bennu is a primordial relic of the early solar system, with chemistry and mineralogy that have remained almost intact since its formation 4.5 billion years ago. It consequently contains vital information about the origins and development of rocky planets like Earth, and it may even include organic compounds akin to those required for life to evolve.
“We’re literally looking at geologic materials that formed before Earth even existed,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told reporters last month.
Impressive mission milestones and sample processing await OSIRIS-REx’s return
OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and arrived at Bennu in 2018, spending nearly two years orbiting the asteroid before descending close enough to sink its robot arm into the asteroid’s loose surface in a grab-and-go maneuver on October 20, 2020.
In May 2021, the spaceship will return to Earth after traveling 1.2 billion miles. The Bennu sample is anticipated to weigh 250 grams (8.8 ounces), greatly exceeding the quantity of material returned by asteroids Ryugu in 2020 and Itokawa in 2010.
When the fresh sample arrives, it will be carried by helicopter to a “clean room” set up at the Utah test range for first evaluation before being transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be parcelled into smaller specimens promised to 200 scientists in 60 laboratories worldwide.