“Any time you want to bring a payload through the atmosphere, you need protection for it. The capsule’s built-in heat shield is designed to save it from burning up at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, as a meteor or unprotected satellite that size hurtling through the atmosphere would. So there are a number of things that need to go just right.” You’ve got parachutes that need to deploy. You’ve got atmospheric reentry, which is a very fiery experience. “We know we can do this, but there’s always a risk when you’re bringing something back to Earth. “We have done sample returns before, so we have that experience,” says Sandra Freund, a systems engineer at Lockheed and the OSIRIS-REx program manager, referring to previous NASA missions that collected materials from a comet and the solar wind. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft for NASA and is responsible for the capsule recovery. That will mean slowing from 28,000 miles per hour to just 11. The scientists will also be able to compare samples of Bennu to Ryugu.īut first, the capsule, which is circular and about the size of an ice chest, has to make it safely down to Earth. Still, he says, “I’m excited to get it into the laboratory, so we can do all this amazing science.” His University of Arizona team will study the composition of the dust and rock fragments in the container and trace any organic molecules they may harbor. To planetary scientist Dante Lauretta, the mission’s principal investigator, it’s also “a little bittersweet,” because the program is now coming to an end. If the mission is successful, it will be only the third asteroid sample return in history-following Japanese space agency missions to Ryugu and Itokawa. This will be a rare look at an untainted rock from space, and it will help scientists understand what Bennu is made of and where it came from. ![]() While meteorites-which are often broken chunks of asteroids-fall from the sky all the time, they’re immediately contaminated by the ground they smash into. Researchers have long salivated over the prospect of examining pristine asteroid fragments. Assuming its contents survive the journey unscathed, the return will mark a tantalizing step forward for planetary science.
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