The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will perform a final flight past the asteroid Bennu on Wednesday.
The spacecraft made history when it briefly hit the asteroid on October 20, 2020, collecting a hefty 2-ounce sample from the surface.
The monster, tucked away safely in the spacecraft, will be returned to Earth in 2023.
The OSIRIS-REx mission, formally known as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, first arrived at the asteroid in December 2018 and has been revolving around it ever since.
During Wednesday’s scenic flight, the spacecraft will get a final close-up of Bennu, capturing images of the asteroid’s surface from just 3.7 miles away. The footage should reveal the aftermath of the October monster collection event, which was a messy affair.
The asteroid’s surface was disturbed when the OSIRIS-REx sampling head plunged 1.6 feet into the asteroid’s surface. It fired a charge of nitrogen gas to disrupt surface material to make sample collection a little easier. The thrusters on the spacecraft also launched material into the sky as the spacecraft retreated from the asteroid after collecting the sample.
Gravity on the asteroid is weak, so rocks and dust were launched and scattered in the process.
Images taken by the spacecraft on Wednesday will show scientists how much the sample collection has changed the asteroid’s surface. The spacecraft will spend nearly six hours photographing Bennu, allowing its cameras to see the asteroid in full rotation.
The route of this flyby is known by OSIRIS-REx, which carried out a similar route in 2019 while searching for a landing site during surveys. Those images from 2019 will be used with the new images to make before and after comparisons.
During the flyby, the OSIRIS-REx instruments collect data for the mission team to review after the tools were covered with dust during the fundraising event. The spacecraft could go on an expanded mission after it deposited Bennu’s monster on Earth in September 2023, so this evaluation can help teams make that decision.
Days after the flyby, all images and data will be returned to the mission teams so they can analyze the changes in Bennu and evaluate the spacecraft’s instruments.
OSIRIS-REx will hover in the Bennu area until May 10, after which it will embark on a two-year, 200 million mile journey back to Earth.
“Leaving Bennu’s vicinity in May brings us to the sweet spot, when the departure maneuver will consume the least amount of fuel on board the spacecraft,” said Michael Moreau, deputy OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. , Maryland, in a statement.
“Nevertheless, with more than 593 miles per hour (265 meters per second) speed change, this will be the largest propulsion maneuver OSIRIS-REx has performed since Bennu’s approach in October 2018.”
The asteroid sample could shed more light on the formation of the solar system and how elements such as water may have been brought to early Earth by asteroid impacts.
As OSIRIS-REx approaches Earth in 2023, it will throw the monster capsule overboard, which will shoot through Earth’s atmosphere and parachute into the Utah desert.
A team is ready to collect the sample and transfer it to an aircraft hangar that will serve as a temporary cleanroom. The sample is then transported to laboratories currently under construction at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“OSIRIS-REx has already provided incredible science,” Lori Glaze, NASA’s director of planetary science, said in a statement. “We are very pleased that the mission is planning another observation along asteroid Bennu to provide new information on how the asteroid reacted to (the Touch-and-Go Sample Collection event) and to say a good goodbye.”
