But if everything runs smoothly, the spacecraft and its prized sample will begin the long journey back to Earth next year and land the sample on Earth in 2023. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will have to detect hazards and delay its own mission if any obstacles get in the way of the sample collection. The Nightingale landing site is surrounded by hazards, so the mission will need to be executed with the utmost precision. However, Bennu isn’t what scientists expected it to be.
The spacecraft has conducted two rehearsals without actually touching the asteroid, so its team is prepared for this highly anticipated event. The spacecraft will perform the entire sequence of approaching the asteroid and collecting the sample autonomously since live commands from Earth won’t be possible.īased on the data returned by the spacecraft, the mission team should be able to confirm if the touchdown was successful on Tuesday. This asteroid is ejecting particles into space. 2 by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles (24 km). This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 Pol圜am images collected on Dec. The team at NASA will livestream animation depicting what is occurring based on the commands that have already been sent to OSIRIS-REx for the sample collection sequence. The asteroid and spacecraft are currently about 207 million miles from Earth, which will cause a communication delay of about 18.5 minutes. The main event of the mission, called the Touch-and-Go sample collection event, or TAG, is scheduled for October 20 at 5 p.m. Since arriving at Bennu, the spacecraft and its cameras have been collecting and sending back data and images to help the team learn more about the asteroid’s composition and map the best potential landing sites to collect samples.
The mission – which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer – launched in September 2016. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been orbiting the asteroid Bennu since late 2018. The mission will attempt the agency’s first sample collection from an asteroid that will be returned to Earth. A NASA spacecraft will play a game of tag this week with a near-Earth asteroid.
0 kommentar(er)
