NASA opens capsule with samples collected from asteroid – 10/01/2023 – Messenger Sideral

NASA scientists opened the capsule that brought samples from the asteroid Bennu on Tuesday (26) and began a preliminary analysis of its contents, seven years after the start of the Osiris-Rex mission, an acronym for Origins Explorer, Spectral Interpretation, Identification of Regolith Resources and Safety.

Launched in September 2016 on an Atlas 5 rocket, the spacecraft arrived at Bennu in 2018 and made its quick landing to collect samples in October 2020. The procedure proved to be quite efficient, easily exceeding the minimum objective of 60 grams of material collected . It was estimated at around 250 grams, with a margin of error of 101, but researchers have yet to determine the exact value. A special laboratory has been set up at the Johnson Space Center in Texas to handle the samples, which are expected to be exposed to the public online at an event on October 11.

The return to Earth, which took place last Sunday (24), at 11:52 am (Brasília time), was not without emotion. The capsule was directed to the Utah desert, in the USA, and entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 44,500 km/h, four hours after separating from the main spacecraft – which is now part of a new mission, Osiris – Apex, which will fly over the asteroid Apophis, in 2029, shortly after it approaches Earth.

During reentry, the stabilization parachute deployed much earlier than expected, at 6,000 meters altitude, versus the expected 1,500 meters. In the images, there was no sign of it opening, but fortunately the main parachute did the job, taking the capsule to a soft landing, around 8 km away from the center of the landing ellipse – a distance considered expected by NASA based on Meteorological conditions.

It was the first asteroid sample return mission carried out by the American space agency, succeeding the Japanese ones in the Hayabusa series and bringing much greater mass. Since the manned Apollo 17, which landed on the Moon in 1972, only one mission has brought back more samples than Osiris-Rex: the Chinese unmanned spacecraft Chang’e 5, which captured 1.7 kg of lunar rocks in 2020.

NASA currently maintains a strong focus on asteroid research. In addition to the most recent success, it is worth remembering the Dart mission, which diverted a celestial bolide from its path last year to demonstrate a planetary defense technique, and two other launches: that of the Lucy probe, which departed in 2021 and will study asteroids that accompany Jupiter in its orbit (the so-called Trojans) and that of the Psyche probe, which is scheduled to take off on October 12th and will visit a metallic asteroid that may have been an embryo of a planet in the remote past of the Solar System.

All these results will certainly help to better understand the formation of the Earth and other solar celestial bodies, in addition to making it possible to protect our planet against the impact of dangerous asteroids.

This column is published on Mondays in print, in Folha Corrida.

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