The artist’s concept shows the planned flight path of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during the final flight of the asteroid Bennu, which is scheduled for April 7. Credit: ASA / Goddard / University of Arizona
NASAsay OSIRIS-REx completed its last flight from Bennu around 06:00 EDT (04:00 MDT) on April 7 and is now slowly drifting away from the asteroid; however, the mission team will have to wait a few more days to find out how the spacecraft changed Bennu’s surface when it grabbed a sample of the asteroid.
The OSIRIS-REx team added this flyby to document surface changes due to the Touch and Go (TAG) sample collection maneuver on October 20, 2020. “By investigating the distribution of the excavated material on the TAG site, we will know about the nature of the surface and subterranean materials together with the mechanical properties of the asteroid, ”said dr. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, said.
This image shows a top-down view of the asteroid Bennu, with a portion of the asteroid’s equatorial ridge and the northern hemisphere illuminated. It was taken on March 4, 2021 by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, from a distance of approximately 300 kilometers. The spacecraft’s cameras are aimed directly at Bennu’s north pole. Two large equatorial craters are visible at the edge of the asteroid (center and center left). The image was obtained during the post-TAG operational phase of the mission as the spacecraft slowly approached Bennu in preparation for a final observation flight on April 7. Credit: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona
During the flight, OSIRIS-REx photographed Bennu for 5.9 hours, covering more than a full rotation of the asteroid. It flies within 3.5 kilometers of the surface of Bennu – the closest since the TAG monster collection.
It will take until at least April 13 before OSIRIS-REx downlink all the data and new photos of Bennu’s surface recorded during the flight survey. It shares the Deep Space Network antennas with other missions such as Mars Perseverance, and usually get 4-6 hours of downlink time per day. “We collected about 4,000 megabytes of data during the flight,” said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager for OSIRIS-REx, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Bennu is currently about 185 million miles from Earth, which means we can only achieve a downlink data rate of 412 kilobits per second, so it will take a few days to download all the flight data.”
NASA invites the public to watch OSIRIS-REx depart from Bennu on NASA.gov and NASA TV, May 10, 2021, at 16:00 EDT.
Once the mission team receives the images and other instrument data, they will study how OSIRIS-REx messed up Bennu’s surface. During contact, the spacecraft’s monster head sank 48.8 centimeters into the surface of the asteroid, simultaneously firing a charge of nitrogen gas under pressure. The drivers of the spacecraft kicked up a large amount of surface material during the burn – which caused rocks and dust to jump off during the process.
OSIRIS-REx, with its pristine and precious asteroid cargo, it will remain in the vicinity of Bennu until May 10, when it will shoot down its drivers and begin its two-year voyage. The mission will deliver the asteroid monster to Earth on September 24, 2023.
KinetX Flight Navigator Leilah McCarthy processes navigation images to help target NASA’s OSIRIS REx final flight of the Asteroid Bennu near Earth. Credit: KinetX Inc./Coralie Adam
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and security and mission insurance for OSIRIS-REx (Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer). Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s planning and processing of science observation. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and offers flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission board in Washington.