NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is about to hurtle past Earth, and if all goes well it will drop its samples from the asteroid Bennu in the Utah desert on 24 September
have already been returned by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft, which visited an asteroid called Ryugu. Comparing the two samples of asteroid dust will be a key component to researchers’ goal of understanding the history of the solar system.
“Let’s say you are a visitor to Earth and you want to learn all about Earth’s geologic history, so you pick up one rock – you’re never going to be able to learn that,” says Thompson. “Going to more than one different asteroid really opens up a whole new world to really understand the diversity of material that was around 4.5 billion years ago”, which is about when the solar system formed.
On 24 September, the day will start early for the OSIRIS-REx team. In the wee hours of the morning, the team’s engineers will make a call about whether it is safe to release the sample capsule. If they give the “go”, it will be sent hurtling towards Earth from about 102,000 kilometres away, more than a quarter of the distance to the moon. It will travel for about four hours before slamming into the atmosphere at about 44,000 kilometres per hour.
“Once we release the capsule, there’s nothing else we can do except wait and hope everything goes smoothly,” says Polit. “All these years of work, it all comes down to that 13-minute descent through the atmosphere.” If the capsule cannot be released on 24 September, it’ll be two years before there’s a chance to try again.will continue on towards an extended mission at the asteroid Apophis.
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