Practicing the game-winning asteroid sample catch

The capsule seemed like one thing from a Nineteen Sixties sci-fi flick. Resting on the bottom, barely tilted, its white warmth protect flaked off in locations, it seemed how one would count on after dashing in from outer space and streaking throughout the sky like a shooting star. Regardless of its look, the mini-fridge-sized object had, in reality, by no means left the floor of Earth.

As a substitute, it was a duplicate of the pattern capsule mounted on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which has been cruising by means of space because it departed asteroid Bennu in Might 2021 with an estimated half-pound of pristine asteroid materials aboard. For coaching functions, engineers positioned the reproduction capsule on a subject on the Lockheed Martin campus close to Littleton, Colorado, the place the spacecraft was constructed.

OSIRIS-REx staff members from NASA, Lockheed Martin, and the College of Arizona had gathered in Littleton on June 27 and 28 to rehearse recovering the capsule. The actual one will land on the Division of Protection’s Utah Take a look at and Coaching Vary on Sept. 24.

“We’re actually on a playground right here,” mentioned mission Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, a professor of planetary sciences at College of Arizona in Tucson. “We’ve room to mess up and follow for the actual factor.”

For the June train, the restoration staff members took their positions subsequent to picket stakes that represented the 4 helicopters that can fly them to the capsule touchdown web site.

Selecting up a container that dropped from the sky through parachute, bearing 4.5-billion-year-old materials collected from an asteroid, is a giant deal. The Bennu pattern incorporates primitive materials, which might embody organic compounds which might be present in all Earth life. This materials could present perception right into a time when the sun and planets have been born within the swirling cloud of fuel and dust that grew to become the solar system. A significant objective of the OSIRIS-REx mission is to know the evolution of natural molecules by means of solar system historical past.

Such pristine asteroid materials is treasured to researchers as a result of it has been shielded from Earth’s setting, not like meteorites that fall to the bottom and are collected on the floor. So the staff in Colorado practiced taking samples from the setting across the capsule to create a library of all the pieces it might get uncovered to—soil, air, natural matter and so forth.

Documenting the environmental conditions across the capsule might be vital for science, Lauretta mentioned, “That manner, if we discover one thing that appears elementary to the origin of life, we’ll have little doubt, and will be capable of rule it out as a contaminant due to that documented historical past.”

Earlier than any team members might method the capsule to gather environmental proof, Vicki Thiem, a security engineer with Lockheed Martin, rehearsed taking its temperature, which she’ll do on Sept. 24 to make sure the capsule has cooled down from its fiery descent by means of the ambiance.

Subsequent, the protection staff practiced inspecting the world across the capsule for potential hazards, resembling gases that is likely to be emanating from it. As soon as the capsule was secured, Lauretta and his staff inspected the terrain, planting little pink flags into the bottom to demarcate a “keep-out zone” the place they wanted to gather samples.

As soon as the capsule was prepared for transport, two folks lifted the 100-pound (45-kilogram) reproduction right into a steel crate and wrapped it in a number of sheets of Teflon and a tarp. Subsequent, they wrapped the crate in a harness that was secured to a cable that, in actual life, might be hooked up to a helicopter and flown to a clear room arrange in a hangar the place the capsule might be opened and the pattern canister extracted. The day after the pattern lands on Earth, the canister and capsule might be flown to NASA’s Johnson Area Heart in Houston the place the pattern might be cared for, saved, and distributed to international scientists.

The OSIRIS-REx staff has two rehearsals left, every with more and more practical situations, on the Utah army coaching vary the place the capsule will land this fall.