NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully touched down on asteroid Bennu to collect pristine surface samples. Teams will confirm sample acquisition in the coming days, offering potential insights into the early Solar System.
NASA accomplished a major milestone: four years after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the OSIRIS-REx probe executed its first sampling attempt on the 500-meter-wide asteroid Bennu at 00:13 French time (over 330 million kilometers from Earth).
The spacecraft spiraled toward the surface, briefly "kissing" it for about ten seconds while deploying its sample collection device at the end of a 3.4-meter robotic arm. Roughly the size of a small van, OSIRIS-REx targeted the eight-meter-wide, relatively flat crater named Nightingale.
Mission controllers at Lockheed Martin's Space Operations Center in Littleton, Colorado, oversaw the operation. "Transcendent! I can't believe we made it," exclaimed Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta during NASA's live broadcast. "The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do."
At over 300 million kilometers distant, radio signals took more than 18 minutes to travel between Earth and the probe, making real-time control impossible. OSIRIS-REx thus performed the autonomous maneuver flawlessly.
During the brief contact, the spacecraft released a burst of nitrogen gas to disturb surface rocks and dust, which the sampler head then collected.
It will take roughly ten days to assess if sufficient material was gathered—the target is at least 60 grams. If short, NASA has contingency plans for up to two additional attempts.
Assuming success, OSIRIS-REx is set to depart Bennu in March 2021 and deliver its samples to Utah's desert on September 24, 2023.
Global scientists will analyze these materials, remnants from 4.5 billion years ago, to understand Solar System formation and possible organic precursors to life on Earth.
OSIRIS-REx follows in the footsteps of Japan's Hayabusa2, which sampled asteroid Ryugu twice in 2019 (February and July), with samples arriving in Australia on December 6.
