(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Members of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission on July. 20, 2023 share their plan to return a pattern of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to the Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary later this fall in a truck-sized capsule. The capsule instance pictured will deploy a parachute earlier than crews transport it to a clear room on web site.
Dugway • One morning this fall, because the solar rises over the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountains, the NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will jettison a capsule it’s hauled throughout house for seven years in direction of Earth. Its vacation spot: Utah.
The capsule, not a lot bigger than a truck tire, is carrying what NASA officers hope would be the first U.S. pattern taken from the floor of an asteroid. Coming into the Earth’s ambiance someplace off the coast of California, the capsule will hurtle east towards Utah’s northwest desert.
The journey from the floor of asteroid Bennu can have been 200 million miles, NASA leaders say, with the flight lasting greater than two years.
If a drogue parachute, used like a brake to sluggish the capsule down, and later a 24-foot most important chute deploys, the capsule and asteroid pattern will make a mushy touchdown within the sand and scrub contained in the army coaching vary of Dugway Proving Floor on the morning of Sept. 24.
All of this, NASA officers say, will take 13 minutes — give or take 60 seconds.
After about twenty years of planning and 7 years of out-and-back house journey, NASA officers instructed members of the Utah media Thursday, it’s solely after these last 780 seconds that they’ll know if it’s been a profitable mission — an asteroid pattern delivered to the Utah desert.
OSIRIS-REx returns
Scientists need to examine Bennu to additional perceive the origins of life within the universe, stated Richard Witherspoon, a floor restoration lead with Lockheed Martin who’s been engaged on the OSIRIS-REx mission.
“So what we’re in search of is how did amino acids, that are the constructing blocks of our life, get right here on Earth,” Witherspoon stated, including that asteroids like Bennu may have delivered these constructing blocks, and even water, to Earth.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dante Lauretta, Principal Investigator, College of Arizona, joins members of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission on Thursday, July 20, 2023 to share their plan to return a pattern of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to the Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary later this fall.
NASA officers say they suppose Bennu is round 4.5 billion years previous — a little bit older than the planet the place Thursday’s information convention was held — and will maintain clues to how our photo voltaic system was fashioned.
“We need to perceive what occurred with us, how we acquired to be right here,” stated Dante Lauretta, a planetary science and cosmochemistry professor on the College of Arizona. On the OSIRIS-REx mission, Lauretta serves as a principal investigator.
“However we additionally need to perceive how frequent that is all through the galaxy, and finally, how frequent is it for the origin of life to happen,” he stated.
OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, quick for Origins Spectral Interpretation Useful resource Identification Safety-Regolith Explorer, was launched out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sept. 8, 2016, and reached Bennu in 2018. After surveying Bennu and giving NASA scientists time to check the asteroid from afar, the 20-foot-long spacecraft briefly landed on Bennu’s floor on Oct. 20, 2020, to gather a pattern of mud and small rocks. These supplies had been then stowed inside OSIRIS-REx and the house traveler started its lengthy journey residence.
However OSIRIS-REx won’t ever really return to the Earth’s floor, and as soon as it releases the Bennu pattern capsule to Earth, it is going to be retasked with a brand new, observation-only asteroid mission.
As soon as the capsule — recognized to mission members because the Pattern Return Capsule, or SRC — touches down in Utah, an 11-person floor restoration staff will fly by helicopter throughout the Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary (UTTR) to retrieve the pattern. That staff, Witherspoon stated, contains personnel from NASA, the College of Arizona, Lockheed Martin and UTTR.
They’ll have two hours to gather the capsule, package deal it for transportation again throughout the army set up, and accumulate soil and water samples from round its touchdown location. These environmental samples will later function controls as soon as scientists start assessing the asteroid materials.
The capsule will then be airlifted with a cable (or sling loaded, in army parlance) to a short lived “clear room” constructed inside a hanger at Dugway. There, specialists will decontaminate the capsule and put together the Bennu pattern for transportation to NASA’s Johnston Area Middle in Houston, Texas.
Whereas Dugway has a historical past of testing the army’s capability to defend towards chemical and organic threats, together with decontaminating gear and army personnel, NASA constructed its personal clear room on the set up.
Nicole Lunning, a curation lead with NASA who can be contained in the clear room to assist package deal the samplefor cargo to Houston, stated natural contamination is the company’s prime concern. NASA, she stated, has already began amassing management samples contained in the clear room.
“We’ll try this once more a pair instances earlier than pattern return,” Lunning stated. “And that does actually give us the flexibility to ensure we’re protecting the pattern as protected as we will as we take it into cleaner and cleaner services, beginning with this one and labs at Johnson Area Middle.”
Why is NASA sending the pattern to Utah?
Ought to Utahns be fearful concerning the capsule returning to Earth? NASA leaders say Utah is the very place to land it, due to the power and house provided by Dugway and the huge, arid desert alongside the Beehive State’s northwest border.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kimberly Allums, Curation Initiatives Lead, joins different members of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission, as she talks concerning the clear room that would be the first stage of restoration on Thursday, July 20, 2023, when a capsule touches down later this fall on the Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary holding a pattern from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
Mike Moreau, NASA’s deputy mission supervisor for OSIRIS-REx, says even making an allowance for variables that might go awry — like winds and variations in atmospheric density — projections of the SRC touchdown zone nonetheless monitor contained in the UTTR boundaries.
“In actual fact,” Moreau stated, “that’s actually one of many most important causes we picked this location.”
And it’s not the primary time NASA has landed pattern containers in Utah. Samples from each the Genesis and Stardust missions landed at UTTR, Witherspoon stated.
Even when the pattern lands safely inside UTTR, are NASA scientists fearful the profitable house mission may flip into the plot of a real-life science fiction film, with chemical or organic matter harming people?
The officers say they casually joke concerning the chance, however add that they’re assured their testing from afar these final seven years has dominated out the chance. The true concern, they are saying, is that Earth may contaminate the almost decade-long science mission.
“We’ll see!” one quipped.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Members of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission on July. 20, 2023 share their plan to return a pattern of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to the Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary later this fall.
https://faredd.xyz/utah-is-true-place-to-land-the-bennu-asteroid-pattern-nasa-osiris-rex-leaders-say/
Jude is an accomplished journalist and news reporter with a decade of specialized experience in covering both space exploration and the innovative world of insuretech. Over the past ten years, Jude has built a solid reputation by meticulously investigating and presenting breakthroughs in space missions as well as emerging trends in insurance technology, establishing him as a trusted voice in these dynamic fields.
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