Observe The Return Of Asteroid Samples to Earth

NASA’s spacecraft will be returning to earth soon and it will be carrying samples from the asteroid, Bennu. The event will be televised on several of NASA’s media outlets including the agency’s website.

The public will also be given the opportunity to ask questions about the mission via NASA Solar System Instagram page between noon on May 10. Answers to said questions will be posted by the same Instagram account on May 11. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, take samples and return to the planet.

On the broadcast, scientists will reveal new images from the mission’s final flyover of the asteroid Bennu and talk about the exciting moments from the October sample retrieval. They will also discuss how the team beat the odds to overcome challenges that threatened their mission.

About 16 minutes after the spacecraft made contact with Bennu, NASA received a confirmation from the OSIRIS-REx control room at Lockheed Martin’s Littleton facility that its main thrusters were fired, advancing the spacecraft away from Bennu’s orbit.

The orbiter will officially begin its homeward journey after it fires its thrusters for 7 minutes. The spacecraft will bring more than 2.1 ounces of asteroid material home with it. Since it landed at Bennu in 2018, OSIRIS-REx has executed the most significant maneuver since departure.

For OSIRIS-REx to achieve a successful sample return at the Utah Test and Training Range on Sept. 24, 2023, it’ll need its thrusters to change its speed by 595 miles per hour (958 kilometers per hour). There is no straight path back to Earth. OSIRIS-REx is on its way back to where the Earth will be in the future.

The spacecraft will complete two orbits around the Sun, traveling 1.4 billion miles (2.3 billion kilometers) so it can catch up with Earth. The OSIRIS-REx probe broke its own records for record-setting orbits of planets and asteroids during its two and a half years of operations on the asteroid. Bennu is the smallest celestial object ever orbited by a man-made spacecraft.

The OSIRIS-REx mission will bring back the most samples that NASA has collected since the Apollo astronauts brought back Moon rocks. The scientists will analyze the sample to learn about the birth of earth and its evolution into a habitable planet.

After the capsule is recovered, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will transport samples to the curation facility, where they will be distributed to various laboratories worldwide. Future generations will be able to study 75% of the samples with technologies that have not yet been developed.

NASA is inviting you toe watch the first asteroid sample return mission that will begin at 4 p.m. EST on Monday, May 10. watch it on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.