Artist’ s concept shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with the Touch-And-Go Sample Arm Mechanism. Credit: NASA’ s Goddard Space Flight Center
rocket and is due to launch on September 8, 2016. It has a 34-day launch window. After three years of traveling – one of those spent orbiting the Sun before using Earth’ s gravitational field as an assist to get to Bennu – OSIRIS-REx will arrive.
A year long detailed survey will occur two months after the spacecraft nears Bennu and slows down – this is when possible sites for sample collection will be mapped out.
Once the site is chosen, the sampling arm on the spacecraft will extend towards the surface of Bennu and make contact for approximately five seconds. During this time, the arm will send out a burst of nitrogen gas which will stir up rocks and material on the surface so they can be captured by the sampler head. There is enough nitrogen in the machine for three attempts at collecting a sample, for a total of between 60 grams and 2 kilograms( 2-70 ounces) of material.
OSIRIS-REx will not begin its journey home until March 2021, when the window opens for it to leave the asteroid. It will take two and a half years for it to get back to Earth, arriving in September 2023.
The spacecraft will release the sample return capsule so it can enter the atmosphere and fall back to the ground in the Utah Test and Training Range. The science team will perform research on the sample for two years following its return, cataloging the sample and conducting
Credit: NASA analysis to achieve the goals of the mission.
At least three quarters of the sample will be remain preserved at NASA’ s Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston so that others may conduct research on it, as well, for generations to come.
For more information on OSIRIS-REx, please visit http:// www. asteroidmission. org /.
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