The OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission!

We’ve all been very excited that NASA’s latest Mars mission perseverance is going to collect samples from Mars, and that another future mission is going to bring those samples back to Earth for the first time.

But how excited will you get when I tell you that a NASA mission is working right now to collect samples from an asteroid millions of kilometers away! That’s pretty cool if you ask me!

The mission is called “OSIRIS-REx” and was launched back in September of 2016, and it’s going to be the first US mission to collect and return a sample from an asteroid.
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The first international mission is the Japanese mission “Hayabusa ” that returned a sample from the asteroid “Ryugu (162173)” back to Earth in 2010.

Before we talk in depth about the mission and where it is now and what it’s doing, let us first discuss the interesting name! The mission’s name is linked to the mission’s goals, because ideally, the name is the sum of the mission goals’ initials.

So “OSIRIS-REx” is going to investigate 5 major concepts of asteroids:

First goal is “Origins”: which deals with the history and the nature of pristine carbon-rich asteroids and the distribution of materials on their surface.
The second goal is “Spectral Interpretation”: it deals with primitive carbon-rich asteroids and measures their most important properties to compare them with ground based measurements done from Earth.

The third is “Resource Identification”: which identifies the properties of primitive carbon-rich asteroids and studies their geology and mineralogy.
Fourth is “Security”: this one goal has to do with hazardous asteroids and it deals with measuring what is called the “Yarkovsky Effect” which is an effect caused when heat is emitted out of rotating asteroids which leads to slight changes in the asteroid orbit.

The fifth and final goal is “Regolith Explorer”: this goal deals with on-site studying of the asteroid regolith, which is a fancy name for “surface material”, and that’s to assess different properties about the surface like texture and morphology and geology.

Now if you’ve been paying attention to the initials of these scientific goals, you would’ve noticed they spell out the name of the mission “OSIRIS-REx.”

Interestingly, the first part of the mission's name also happens to be the name of the ancient Egyptian god “Osiris.” Just like “Osiris” used to spread his knowledge of agriculture across the Nile Delta giving life to the world.

OSIRIS-REx will also work towards giving life to long-sought mysteries about the asteroids and their link to the origin of life on Earth.

The mission will fulfill this by taking the journey to a targeted near-Earth asteroid and study it extensively, then land on it to collect at least a 2 ounce (almost 57 gram) sample and bring it back to Earth to be examined.
Now this targeted near-Earth asteroid is “Bennu”, which was formerly known as “1999 RQ36”! Asteroid Bennu is a “B-type asteroid” which means it contains organic materials and minerals that hold water, it also means that it’s a primitive carbon-rich asteroid.

Primitive asteroids are believed to have kept their original form since they formed alongside the formation of Earth, thus giving us a clue to the organic molecules that may be the building block of life on our planet.

Bennu is a 510 meter (~1670 feet) tall asteroid with a diameter of 500 meters (1640 feet), it is believed that Bennu formed within the main asteroid belt then drifted closer to planet Earth at a distance that’s a little more than 8 million kilometers (~ 5 million miles.)

Bennu rotates very fast around itself with a rotation period that equals to 4.3 hours and an average speed of 63000 mph (more than 100,000 kilometer/hr.)

Now that we’ve talked about the asteroid, let’s check out the spacecraft that’s going there and what it’ll have on board!

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Видео The OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission! канала Insane Curiosity