We know there are a lot of, er, distractions right now but NASA's got some sweet video of its asteroid rubble raiser
- Reference: 1603352886
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/22/bennu_scoop_video/
- Source link:
“This amazing first for NASA demonstrates how an incredible team from across the country came together and persevered through incredible challenges to expand the boundaries of knowledge,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine [1]said . “Our industry, academic, and international partners have made it possible to hold a piece of the most ancient Solar System in our hands.”
Bridenstine told reporters at a press conference last night that NASA has now broken the record for orbiting the smallest object yet. The OSIRIS-REx probe has been circling Bennu, a space rock that’s slightly wider than the height of the Empire State Building, and on Tuesday conducted the most critical part of its mission – when it retrieved a sample of pebbles and debris from the asteroid’s surface.
[2]
In the pipe, five by five ... An illustration depicting OSIRIS-REx just before it touched down on the asteroid and jumped off with some of its surface material. Source: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
The spacecraft's robotic arm known as the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) [3]briefly grazed Bennu just for six seconds. A disk at the end of the device fired out nitrogen gas to kick up a swirl of dirt and rocks that were then scooped up.
The descent to the surface hurried along at about 0.2 miles per hour with a crater on Bennu named Nightingale. A camera on the spacecraft snapped away during the fall, and scientists had to wait hours before all the images had finished beaming back to Earth.
“I can tell you a lot of us were up really late last night,” said Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the mission and professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona in the US said during the media briefing.
“By about 2AM local time in Denver, we finally got what we call the money shot of TAGSAM contacting the surface. And then I finally got some shut-eye and dreamed of a wonderworld of Bennu regolith particles floating all around me.”
You can [4]see here , in these pictures, the moment the TAGSAM made contact with Bennu. Small rocks are whizzing in the air, kicked up by the momentum of TAGSAM and the nitrogen gas. The video below was recorded by the probe as it touched down and blasted off, and now shared online by NASA:
[5]Youtube Video
The US space agency managed to land the robotic arm less than a metre off its target landing site: the center of Nightingale. Not bad considering that while ground control was directing the spacecraft to some extent, they were otherwise relying on onboard software to get the job done. Given that the craft is some 322 million km or 18.5 light-minutes away, real-time control is not possible. The next step is to see if the spacecraft has gathered enough regolith in its sample head; NASA wants at least 60 grams (2oz) of asteroid dirt. If not enough was collected, the probe will have to try again.
“We hope to see inside the TAGSAM head, but that’s not guaranteed,” Lauretta said. “It might have packed so much regolith that there's no light inside that we can’t see anything.” In order to measure how much cosmic rubble it has acquired, the passenger-bus-sized spacecraft will spin with its robotic arm extended, and NASA will measure the moment of inertia to measure the mass inside the sample head on Saturday.
In late September 2023, the probe's samples arrive back at Earth, and descend under parachutes, it is hoped. About a quarter of the stuff will be dished out to academics around the world to study. NASA will keep the rest, and most of it will be preserved for future generations of scientists. ®
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[1] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-osiris-rex-spacecraft-successfully-touches-asteroid
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/22/osirisrex.jpg
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/21/nasa_bennu_sample/
[4] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/osiris-rex-tags-surface-of-asteroid-bennu/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJBv4reH9IU
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"The chance that extraterrestrial bacteria would be deadly to humans is zero. Not just very, very small. Zero. Pathogenesis requires intimacy. This intimacy is attained through millions of years of co-evolution. The need for intimacy is apparent when you look at how bacteria and viruses cause infections and disease."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/06/16/would-extraterrestrial-bacteria-be-dangerous-to-humans/
So, when the Martians finally do arrive, we'll be screwed, as our microscopic allies will be useless against them!
And with that tiny impact.....
...it sent Bennu on an imperceptible new orbit that set up a collision with Earth in AD 3454...
[joke]
Re: And with that tiny impact.....
You raise a good point. I wonder what that meeting went like, because NASA probably included that in the risk assessment - does any impact within the scope of the probe's thrust and mass knock the asteroid into a threatening orbit.
Oh, who am I kidding? Aside from the cool as hell maths involved, it was a boring meeting.
Re: And with that tiny impact.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101955_Bennu#Possible_Earth_impact
It gets close in 2060 and 2135, but can't hit us on those dates. However, if it passes through a gravitational keyhole, future impacts are possible. Luckily, we'll all be dead by then.
"The passenger-bus-sized spacecraft will spin with its robotic arm extended, and NASA will measure the moment of inertia to measure the mass inside the sample head on Saturday."
Brilliant: We could put some kind of instrument to measure what we captured, but instead we'll just use the entire spacecraft and physics as an instrument!
descend under parachutes, it is hoped
and not burst upon landing, it is also hoped!
Re: descend under parachutes, it is hoped
This.
I was wondering (not having read up on the project), if it might be tasked with docking at the ISS to offload it's cargo so it can be pre-analysed before entering the atmosphere. Would have saved carrying the necessary stronger shielding and chassis all the way there and back.
Re: descend under parachutes, it is hoped
Instead it would have to carry a lot of additional fuel there and back, and by a lot I mean a multiple of what the heatshield and associated equipment weighs.
Collecting dust
Now *I* would have used a vacuum cleaner to suck up all that flying dirt.
Everyone knows a vacuum cleaner makes the vacuum cleaner.
There is a documentary on that: "The Andromeda Strain". It's quite good.