NASA is attempting to collect samples from an asteroid that's billions of years old, a historic mission many years in the making.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in 2016, arrived at the Bennu asteroid in 2018 and will collect its samples today (Tuesday, Oct. 20) at 5:12 p.m. CDT. Those samples will return to Earth in 2023.
Here's what you need to know:
Bennu is 200 million miles from Earth. It's as tall as the Empire State Building. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is the size of a 15-passenger van.
The "tag" only takes a few seconds. The spacecraft will spend about 10 seconds on the surface of Bennu, where it fires a pressurized nitrogen bottle to agitate and lift Bennu’s surface material. This is then caught by the spacecraft to be returned to Earth.
A lot could go wrong. It takes 18.5 minutes for signals to travel between the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and Earth. This means the spacecraft will have to land autonomously, and there's a 6 percent chance that it could detect a hazard in its landing area and abort the mission. NASA has also detected an up to 30 percent chance that the spacecraft lands but does not collect a large enough sample (its goal is to collect at least 60 grams but the spacecraft is capable of collecting almost 4 1/2 pounds). There is a backup mission planned at an alternate landing site in January should any of these complications occur.
This mission could answer questions on how water and organic material were delivered to Earth. Some scientists believe that when asteroids or comets crashed into the Earth, they were carrying water and carbon-based molecules that helped initiate life on our planet. Returning samples from Bennu could help researchers better understand the composition of asteroids and how these celestial bodies might have contributed to the early life on Earth.
Bennu might one day crash into the Earth. There is a 1-in-2,700 chance that Bennu will collide with the Earth between the years 2175 and 2199. Knowing its composition now could help future generations create a deterrence plan should they need to prevent a collision.
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October 20, 2020 at 10:32PM
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What you need to know about NASA's plans to 'tag' an asteroid - Houston Chronicle
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