The first mission of the Pot to retrieve a sample of asteroid and return to American soil is expected on Sunday in a dangerous descent into the Utah desert.
Scientists hope that the material – possibly the most abundant recovered by such a mission – will give humanity a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.
The American space probe OSIRIS-REx, launched in 2016, collected the sample from an asteroid called Bennu almost three years ago.
His return to Earth is scheduled for Sunday, at a military test site in the west of the state.
About four hours earlier, about 108,000 km from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx probe will release the capsule containing the sample.
The final descent will last 13 minutes. The capsule will enter the atmosphere at a speed of 43,000 km/h reaching a maximum temperature of around 2,800 degrees Celsius, the space agency said.
If all goes well, two successive parachutes will make the capsule have a soft landing in the desert, where it will be recovered by personnel in the area.
Reaching the 650 square km target area is like “throwing a dart across a basketball court and hitting the target,” Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at the University, explained at a press conference last month. Pot.
On the eve of landing, controllers will have one last opportunity to abort the mission if conditions are not correct. If so, the probe will then have to orbit the sun before its next attempt, in 2025.
”Sample return missions are difficult. “There are a number of things that can go wrong,” said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-Rex program manager at Lockheed Martin.
Teams have carefully prepared for the capsule’s return, including for a “hard landing scenario” in order to preserve the asteroid material, he added.
“Clean room” in Texas
Once the capsule reaches the surface, a team will check its condition before placing it in a mesh that will be loaded by a helicopter and taken to a “clean room.”
The next day, the sample will be flown to a specialized laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Scientists will open the capsule to separate the rock pieces from the dust over several days.
Some of the samples will be for studies now, saving the rest for future generations with better technology, a practice that began during the Apollo missions to the Moon.
NASA is expected to reveal the first findings at a press conference on October 11.
Obtaining the sample involved a high-risk operation in October 2020. The probe made contact with the asteroid for a few seconds and emitted a burst of compressed nitrogen to lift the sample and capture it.
The asteroid Bennu surprised scientists because during the few seconds of contact with its surface, the probe’s arm sank into the ground, revealing a much lower density than expected.
However, this allowed NASA to take much more than the 60 grams initially planned. The agency believes the sample may be up to 250 grams of material.
This mass could be the largest sample “from beyond lunar orbit,” said Melissa Morris, a NASA program executive.
“Seeds of life”
The first asteroid samples were brought to the Land by Japanese probes in 2010 and 2020, and in the latter, uracil, one of the components of RNA, was discovered.
The discovery reinforces the theory that life on Earth could have been planted from outer space when an asteroid collided with our planet.
Asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu, one of those studied by Japan, may look similar but be “very, very different,” according to Morris.
According to Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona in Tucson and principal investigator of OSIRIS-Rex, the rocks may contain “clues that are believed to answer some of the deepest questions humanity is asking.”
The samples may represent the “seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet, giving rise to this incredible biosphere, biological evolution and that we are here today.”
Bennu, 500 meters in diameter, orbits the sun and approaches Earth every six years.
(With information: AFP)
Source: Gestion
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