What Did NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Find In Space? ‘Important Finding’ To Be Shared Tomorrow

New Delhi: NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, launched five years ago, is on its way back to Earth with samples of rock and dust collected from asteroid Bennu. NASA has said it will discuss an “important finding” from the mission on Wednesday.

Launched on September 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, OSIRIS-REx reached Bennu in 2018 and is to reach Earth in September 2023.

NASA will host a teleconference on Wednesday to share with the media some details collected by the mission, it said in a statement.

According to the space agency, OSIRIS-REx has spent over two years near Bennu, “which is a third of a mile (500 meters) wide”, and gathered information about the asteroid’s size, shape, mass, and composition. OSIRIS-REx also monitored the spin and orbital trajectory of Bennu.

Dante Lauretta, study co-author and OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson, will brief the media along with Davide Farnocchia, study lead author and scientist at Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Southern California.

Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters, will be present too.

The OSIRIS-REx Mission  

OSIRIS-REx, after a study of near-Earth asteroid Bennu for two years, is bringing samples back to Earth for further scientific study.
The spacecraft started its two-and-a-half-year cruise towards Earth on May 20, 2021, when it fired its main engines full throttle for seven minutes, NASA said. This was its “most significant manoeuver since 2018”.

Before leaving Bennu, OSIRIS-REx scooped up a sample of rock and dust from its surface, which it is bringing back to Earth.  
According to NASA, the spacecraft is due to reach Earth on September 24, 2023 “after orbiting the Sun twice”.

Upon the spacecraft’s return, the capsule containing the samples from the asteroid would separate from it and enter the atmosphere of Earth, NASA had said in May.

Scientists will be waiting at the Utah Test and Training Range in West Desert to retrieve the capsule that will parachute from the spacecraft.

All information gleaned from Bennu by OSIRIS-REx will be used by the scientists to “refine theoretical models” and also improve future predictions, NASA said.