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NASA spacecraft begins long journey home with asteroid sample

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Earlier today, a NASA spacecraft in deep space fired its thrusters to begin its long journey home.

The space agency’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is bringing with it samples of material collected from the ancient Bennu asteroid last year in the first mission of its kind by NASA.

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“After nearly 5 years in space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is heading to Earth with a sample of rocks and dust from a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid!” the agency said in a tweet on Monday, May 10.

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After nearly 5 years in space, @NASASolarSystem's #OSIRISREx mission is heading to Earth with a sample of rocks & dust from a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid!

🪨 ▪️▪️▪️🛰️▪️▪️▪️ 🌎

Check out how its mission #ToBennuAndBack exceeded our expectations: https://t.co/91n38cmQNA pic.twitter.com/bxtT0uXeu3

— NASA (@NASA) May 10, 2021

NASA livestreamed the moment when confirmation came through to its mission team that OSIRIS-REx had successfully departed Bennu’s orbit to begin its mammoth journey of some 200 million miles (320 million km).

OSIRIS-REx Departure: Farewell to Asteroid Bennu

To begin its voyage to Earth, the spacecraft fired its main engines at full throttle for seven minutes in what NASA described as OSIRIS-REx’s “most significant maneuver since it arrived at Bennu in 2018.”

The spacecraft is set to perform a flyby of Earth in September 2023, dropping off a capsule of material from an asteroid that scientists believe formed in the first 10 million years of our solar system’s existence. It means that the sample has the potential to provide us with more insight into the formation of our solar system and could even shed new light on the origins of life.

The Bennu asteroid is about 500 meters long and is traveling through space at 63,000 mph. The challenging sample collection process involved OSIRIS-REx performing the astonishing feat of touching down on the asteroid before using its robotic arm to gather the material.

“OSIRIS-REx’s many accomplishments demonstrated the daring and innovate way in which exploration unfolds in real time,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters. “The team rose to the challenge, and now we have a primordial piece of our solar system headed back to Earth where many generations of researchers can unlock its secrets.”

While this is the first time NASA has collected a sample from an asteroid, the feat has been achieved before, most recently by the Japanese space agency, which in 2019 used its Hayabusa2 spacecraft to gather material from the Ryugu asteroid before successfully delivering the sample to Earth last year.

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Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA has collected a whopping 121 grams of sample from asteroid Bennu
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When the OSIRIS-REx dropped a capsule in the Utah desert last year, it made headlines around the globe for returning NASA's first sample of an asteroid to Earth. Scientists were eager to get their hands on the sample of asteroid Bennu to learn about the early formation of the solar system, but actually getting at the sample proved to be rather trickier than imagined.

Scientists were able to extract 70 grams of material from the sample canister relatively easily, making it by far the largest asteroid sample ever brought to Earth, but two troublesome fasteners made it difficult to extract the rest of the sample. The team knew it had plenty more sample inside, but it had to be patient as special new tools were constructed that could undo the fasteners without losing a single gram of the precious sample.

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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.

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