The Osiris-King mission took samples from the Bennu asteroid and is now on its way back to Earth, where it will arrive on September 24 and deliver the cargo in the Utah desert (USA) in a complex NASA operation.
Osiris-King spent seven years in space, where he traveled to Bennu, landed and took samples of the rocky surface, and then returned. Now that the mission is approaching, the challenge will be the ideal parachute, protecting it from the heat, vibrations and terrestrial contamination.
This will be the first time that NASA has completed this kind of operation, which the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) has already done in a similar way in 2020, when its Hayabusa2 returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which was dropped. in a box across the Australian desert.
On September 24, as the spacecraft flies by Earth, the sample capsule will drop, which is expected to enter the atmosphere at approximately 14:41 GMT, bringing Osiris-King to the end of its primary mission.
Until the box is opened, the amount of material collected will not be known, although it is confirmed that the 60 percent marked by NASA as the minimum objective has been reached.
The capsule landed on US Defense Department property that is part of the Test and Training Range and the Dugway Foundation, NASA said in a statement.
Once on the ground, “The team will race against the clock to retrieve it and bring it to the safety of the white room provider (with strict security and cleaning measures),” explained project manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mike Moreau.
The recovery team will collect a helicopter capsule for the first portable spacecraft and collect samples of the surrounding soil and air to help determine whether any small contaminants have come into contact with the asteroid sample.
From now until September, a team of supervisors will train and develop the procedures necessary to recover the model in Utah and transport it to the factory.
There it will be compiled and a quarter of the scientific mission will be distributed around the world for analysis, while the rest will be preserved for the study of science, now and in the future.
Asteroids, which are ancient materials left over from the age of planet formation, may contain molecular precursors to life and provide clues to the formation of oceans and the solar system.
The importance of the Ryugu and Bennu samples was taken directly from their surfaces because they are pristine material that has not been exposed to any terrestrial contamination, as can happen when asteroid fragments hit our planet.
