When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swings by Earth on Sunday, it is expected to deliver a rare cosmic gift: a pristine sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing an estimated 8.8 ounces of asteroid rocks and soil from space toward a landing zone in the Utah desert.
Returning NASA’s first asteroid sample collected in space to Earth has been years in the making. Here’s a look at the mission milestones so far — and what lies ahead.OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, has been on quite a journey over the past seven years. Launched from Cape Canaveral in 2016, the NASA spacecraft arrived in orbit around Bennu in December 2018.
The spacecraft spiraled closer and closer to the asteroid until it went in for a historic TAG, or Touch-and-Go sample collection event, on October 20, 2020. The OSIRIS-REx team was able to meet and overcome these challenges, and the spacecraft is slated to return the largest sample collected by a NASA mission since Apollo astronauts brought back lunar rocks decades ago.
Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule to a gentle touchdown at 11 miles per hour , and recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so, said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and help recover the capsule.
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