NASA’s asteroid sampling OSIRIS-REx probe will spend an extra two months at its target space before returning to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx removed a lot of dirt and rock from the nearby asteroid Bennu 500 meters wide (500 meters) in October 2020 – so many things, in fact, that the probe’s sample collector literally overflows.
The original mission plan required OSIRIS-REx to leave Bennu’s area on March 3 with this precious cargo. But the departure date has been pushed back to May 10, NASA officials announced Tuesday (January 26).
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“When we leave the Bennu area in May, we’re in the ‘sweet spot’ when the departure maneuver will consume the least amount of fuel on board the spacecraft,” said Michael Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. , said in a NASA statement.
“Nevertheless, with more than 593 miles per hour (265 meters per second) speed change, this will be the largest propulsion maneuver carried out by OSIRIS-REx since the approach to Bennu in October 2018,” Moreau added.
The new plan does not change the ETA for the Bennu monsters. NASA officials said in the same statement that they must still descend to Earth on September 24 in a special return capsule in northern Utah. (That touch will complete a recent trifecta with sample returns for humanity: pristine monsters from the moon and the asteroid Ryugu came to Earth last month, thanks to the Chang’e 5 mission in China and the Hayabusa2 probe in Japan.)
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Fuel efficiency is not the only potential benefit of the new Bennu departure date. The OSIRIS-REx team is studying the feasibility of one last fly of the asteroid, a “farewell tour” in April that will take the probe within 3.2 kilometers of Bennu’s rough surface.
“We want to go back and say goodbye to Bennu and also document the state of the surface after the TAG,” OSIRIS-REx, lead researcher Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said Tuesday during a virtual presentation at NASA’s 24th meeting said. Assessment group for small bodies. “We are optimistic that we will succeed, but it is not yet guaranteed.”
‘TAG’ is a reference to OSIRIS-REx’s October 20 ‘touch and go’ sample collection, which significantly disturbed Bennu’s surface where it happened, the floor of a 65 meter wide (20 m) crater called Nightingale. The spacecraft’s collection head penetrated 48.8 centimeters into the asteroid, Lauretta said. And the proponents of OSIRIS-REx raised the issue further during the sin ” backaway burn ‘that day.
OSIRIS-REx may have even more work to do to complete the farewell tour and unload the Bennu monsters here on earth. In 2022, the mission team plans to submit a proposal for an extended mission to NASA, which could include sending OSIRIS-REx to study the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis more closely just after the asteroid’s near-Earth flight in April 2029.
“It could be an encounter mission,” Lauretta said. “We can put the spacecraft in orbit; we can do all the global and site-specific characterization, just like we did at Bennu. All the hardware for monster return would be gone.”
Early analyzes suggest that there is no chance that OSIRIS-REx could swing Apophis through a ‘keyhole’ to place the asteroid on a future collision with Earth, as long as the probe’s arrival after Apophis’ flight from Lauretta of April 2029, Lauretta added.
“But we will continue to look at it,” he said.
Another possibility for the proposed extended mission, Lauretta added, is a meeting with the asteroid 1999 FA, which would take place shortly before the intended arrival of Apophis.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.