asteroid – OSIRIS-REx Mission

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Achieves Sample Mass Milestone

The curation team processing NASA’s asteroid Bennu sample has removed and collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of rocks and dust from the sampler hardware – surpassing the agency’s goal of bringing at least 60 grams to Earth.

And the good news is, there’s still more of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample to collect.

The sample processed so far includes the rocks and dust found on the outside of the sampler head, as well as a portion of the bulk sample from inside the head, which was accessed through the head’s mylar flap. Additional material remaining inside the sampler head, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM, is set for removal later, adding to the mass total.

In the last week, the team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston changed its approach to opening the TAGSAM head, which contained the bulk of the rocks and dust collected by the spacecraft in 2020. After multiple attempts at removal, the team discovered two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head could not be removed with the current tools approved for use in the OSIRIS-REx glovebox. The team has been working to develop and implement new approaches to extract the material inside the head, while continuing to keep the sample safe and pristine.

As a first step, the team successfully accessed some of the material by holding down the head’s mylar flap and removing the sample inside with tweezers or a scoop, depending on material size. The collection and containment of material through this method, combined with the earlier collection of material located outside the head, yielded a total mass exceeding the 60 grams required.

The team will spend the next few weeks developing and practicing a new procedure to remove the remaining asteroid sample from the TAGSAM sampler head while simultaneously processing the material that was collected this week. The OSIRIS-REx science team will also proceed with its plan to characterize the extracted material and begin analysis of the bulk sample obtained so far.

All curation work on the sample – and the TAGSAM head – is performed in a specialized glovebox under a flow of nitrogen to keep it from being exposed to Earth’s atmosphere, preserving the sample’s pristine state for subsequent scientific analysis. The tools for any proposed solution to extract the remaining material from the head must be able to fit inside the glovebox and not compromise the scientific integrity of the collection, and any procedures must be consistent with the clean room’s standards.

While the procedure to access the final portion of the material is being developed, the team has removed the TAGSAM head from the active flow of nitrogen in the glovebox and stored it in its transfer container, sealed with an O-ring and surrounded by a sealed Teflon bag to make sure the sample is kept safe in a stable, nitrogen-rich, environment.

Brian May Guest Blog: Stereoscopic Images from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Sampling Head

Making stereoscopic images of asteroid Bennu was not part of the brief of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission; but we civilians, Claudia Manzoni and myself, were invited by mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta to join the science team and find opportunities for stereoscopy in the wealth of visual data acquired by the spacecraft’s cameras at Bennu.

To do this, we looked for pairs of images of Bennu’s surface taken from viewpoints some distance apart. This separation of viewpoints, known as the “baseline,” has to be just right to give us the experience of depth and reality when the images are viewed stereoscopically. Such viewing requires the left and right images to be delivered separately to our left and right eyes, which is how we see in “real life.” When this is done, the small differences between the components of the stereo pair – known as parallax differences – give our brains the opportunity to instantaneously perceive depth and solidity in the image.

These stereoscopic images are a pair of close-ups of ancient asteroid Bennu material retrieved by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and delivered to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. The material is on top of the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism), the instrument used to collect the sample from the asteroid in 2020. The sample and TAGSAM are currently in a clean room within the Astromaterials Curation Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld, Joseph Abersold for the original images/Brian May, Claudia Manzoni for stereo processing of the images.

In the case of the images shown here, with the Bennu sample safely delivered to planet Earth, the curation team made it easy for us. In the moments when the TAGSAM head was flipped over after removing it from the avionics deck at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, photographs from many angles were captured, enabling us to find just one (nearly!) perfect pair, showing the intimate structure of just a few grains of the dark, coal-black sample.

It’s possible to view this side-by side stereoscopic pair without a stereoscope, by relaxing the axes of the eyes, as if staring through the screen to infinity. But the best experience will be had by using a stereoscope, the same way the OSIRIS-REx mission team viewed our stereo images while the search was on to find a safe spot on asteroid Bennu’s surface for the delicate Touch-and-Go sampling maneuver.

The largest “boulders” in this picture are about 1 centimeter across. Enjoy this piece of history in the making!

–Brian May

Initial Curation of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Sample

The initial curation process for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample of asteroid Bennu is moving slower than anticipated, but for the best reason: the sample runneth over. The abundance of material found when the science canister lid was removed earlier this week has meant that the process of disassembling the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head – which holds the bulk of material from the asteroid – is off to a methodical start.

A silver capsule is opened inside a glovebox surrounded by technicians gowned in blue protective suits — NASA curation team members along with Lockheed Martin recovery specialists look on after the successful removal of the sample return canister lid. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

After the collection event on Bennu three years ago, scientists expected they could find some asteroid material in the canister outside the TAGSAM head when they saw particles slowly escaping the head before it was stowed. However, the actual amount of dark particles coating the inside of the canister lid and base that surrounds the TAGSAM is even more than they’d anticipated.

“The very best ‘problem’ to have is that there is so much material, it’s taking longer than we expected to collect it,” said deputy OSIRIS-REx curation lead Christopher Snead of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “There’s a lot of abundant material outside the TAGSAM head that’s interesting in its own right. It’s really spectacular to have all that material there.”

The first sample collected from outside the TAGSAM head, on the avionics deck, is now in the hands of scientists who are performing a quick-look analysis, which will provide an initial understanding of the Bennu material and what we can expect to find when the bulk sample is revealed.

“We have all the microanalytical techniques that we can throw at this to really, really tear it apart, almost down to the atomic scale,” said Lindsay Keller, OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team member from Johnson.

The quick-look research will utilize various instruments, including a scanning electron microscope (SEM), infrared measurements, and x-ray diffraction (XRD), to gain a better understanding of the sample.

The SEM will offer a chemical and morphological analysis, while the infrared measurements should provide information on whether the sample contains hydrated minerals and organic-rich particles. The x-ray diffraction is sensitive to the different minerals in a sample and will give an inventory of the minerals and perhaps an indication of their proportions.

“You’ve got really top-notch people and instruments and facilities that are going to be hitting these samples,” Keller said.

This quick-look science is a tool that will offer more data to researchers as they approach the larger pieces of sample for follow-on analysis.

Over the coming weeks, the curation team will move the TAGSAM head into a different specialized glovebox where they will undertake the intricate process of disassembly to ultimately reveal the bulk sample within.

Rachel Barry
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Capsule Arrives in Houston

The first U.S. asteroid sample, delivered by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to Earth on Sept. 24, has arrived at its permanent home at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be cared for, stored, and distributed to scientists worldwide.

A shipping container with the canister of asteroid Bennu sample is strapped down onboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft. The sample canister, along with disassembled capsule components and environmental samples from Utah, was transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Sept. 25, 2023 – one day after landing in the Utah desert. Credit: NASA/ Molly Wasser.

The sample arrived in Houston at 12:40 pm ET (11:40 am CT) aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft, which landed at Ellington Field. From there, it was transferred to NASA Johnson.

The team will spend the next few weeks in the clean room at Johnson built exclusively for Bennu samples. The clean room includes custom glove boxes built to fit the sample canister containing the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head inside. The TAGSAM head was on the end of a robotic arm that collected rocks and dust from asteroid Bennu’s surface on October 20, 2020.

The new OSIRIS-REx sample clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image was taken on June 22, 2023. Credit: NASA/James Blair.

Having practiced these procedures for months, scientists and technicians plan to proceed through the many steps of removing the sample from the TAGSAM. First, they plan to place the canister in the glove box and disassemble it. Then, they plan to remove the TAGSAM head, where scientists expect most sample to be, cataloging and storing every piece of hardware and asteroid dust found outside of it.

Researchers plan to analyze asteroid dust from the initial disassembly for an early glimpse into the chemical, mineralogical, and physical characteristics and rock types that may be found in the bulk sample.

NASA plans to share these initial findings, plus first images of the sample, in a live broadcast on October 11.

OSIRIS-REx Blog Coverage for Sample Landing Day Concludes

This picture was taken from outside a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. In the picture, OSIRIS-Rex team members are disassembling a capsule, with asteroid sample inside, that landed on the military range on Sept. 24, 2023. Credit: Keegan Barber.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx clean room team has finished disassembling the sample capsule and packaging its components, including the unopened sample canister. Now packed in shipping containers – along with the environmental samples the recovery team collected around the capsule’s landing site this morning – the items are scheduled to be delivered on Monday, Sept. 25, to their permanent home at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

OSIRIS-REx Photos from Sample Landing Day

A desert landscape, sandy with tufts of green shrubs, is pictured here. In the middle of the image is a dark, cone-shaped object. To its left is an orange and white clump of fabric. — A capsule with a sample of asteroid Bennu inside, delivered to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is seen shortly after touching down on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Photo Credit: Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber.

View or download photos from the Sept. 24 OSIRIS-REx sample-landing activities.

View or download OSIRIS-REx mission photos from a curated collection.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Capsule Secured in Utah Clean Room

At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down.

Once the helicopter line was detached and the helicopter had departed, the clean room team removed the capsule from its metal transport cradle. They loaded the capsule onto a cart and wheeled it into the hangar where a temporary clean room had been set up. In the hangar, the capsule was fully unwrapped and cleaned, and then taken into the clean room for disassembly.   

To protect the clean room from contaminants, only six people are allowed inside. Covered from head to toe in bunny suits, hoods, nitrile gloves, shoe covers, plus hair and beard covers, their job is to disassemble the capsule and remove the unopened sample canister inside. They will package all the parts for transport by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday morning.

A cone-shaped, 3-dimensional object is shown. On the left side, the object is closed, and on the right, its lid is open, exposing technical parts inside. — A detailed view of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule. The capsule weighs about 100 pounds and is the size of a large truck tire. Credit: Lockheed Martin Space.

As soon as the disassembly team opens the capsule and removes several components, exposing the unopened sample canister, the plan is to connect the canister to a continuous flow of nitrogen, which will be monitored every hour. Nitrogen is an inert gas that will protect the Bennu sample from oxygen, moisture, and other contaminants; NASA has used nitrogen to protect space samples since the Apollo era.

If clean room staff find loose asteroid particles inside the capsule, they will collect them and place them in aluminum cups for transfer to Johnson.

The disassembly and packaging process is expected to last about five hours, with a clean room technician documenting the process for NASA’s history records.

Helicopter Transports Sample Capsule to Clean Room

With the sample secured and the area around the sample capsule deemed safe, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team completed the detailed and highly coordinated recovery process (which they have practiced many times in the past year). They placed the 100-pound capsule into a metal cradle and wrapped it in multiple sheets of Teflon and then a tarp. Next, the team wrapped the crate in a harness and secured it to one end of a 100-foot cable hanging from a helicopter.

Now, the capsule is being flown to a temporary clean room on base by the long-line helicopter. In the clean room, it will be disassembled and packaged in parts for transport on Monday to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, its permanent home.

A human-size, metal box with windows takes up most of the image. It is inside an industrial-looking building. — A temporary clean room set up on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range is seen here, ready to receive a capsule with samples of asteroid Bennu on Sept. 24. The image was taken on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber.

Three scientists from NASA and University of Arizona remain at the capsule’s landing site, along with a military safety specialist and helicopter pilot. The scientists will collect soil and air samples from the area to catalog everything the capsule could have been exposed to. If any air or soil somehow made it to the sample canister inside the capsule, scientists will need to account for those contaminants when they analyze the chemical makeup of Bennu’s dust.

A mission goal is to search for molecules which may have been important to the origin of life on Earth (or possibly elsewhere in the solar system). Many of these compounds are abundant in Earth’s environment. Thus, to preserve the science and more easily distinguish between molecules from Earth and those from space, is it imperative to protect the sample from environmental contamination.  

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Team in Field for Capsule Recovery

Having received the capsule’s precise coordinates from radar trackers when it landed, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx helicopter recovery team arrived at its landing location within 20 minutes.

A U.S. Air Force munitions specialist was the first person to disembark a helicopter. His task was to identify and clear the area around the capsule of any possible munitions left over from military training. He also marked a safe approach path with small flags for the OSIRIS-REx team members who will be working with and around the capsule.

The next person to approach the capsule was a Lockheed Martin engineer who inspected the condition of the capsule and measured the gas levels just around it. She wore heat-resistant gloves in case the capsule was still hot from its interaction with the atmosphere, and a gas mask in case the capsule battery was damaged and releasing noxious gases such as sulfur dioxide.

To protect the sample from possible contamination, the Lockheed engineer secured covers over the capsule vents, which are designed to let air in, through a filter, to adjust the pressure inside the capsule as it traveled to and from space through Earth’s atmosphere. She also covered the canister where the parachutes were stored (both parachutes separated from the capsule, as planned).

The plan now is for the rest of the team to approach the capsule to pack it up for its flight to the temporary clean room on the military range.

Capsule Containing Asteroid Bennu Sample Has Landed

The U.S. has, for the first time, delivered rocks and dust from an asteroid to Earth. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, carrying a sample of asteroid Bennu, touched down on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 a.m. EDT (8:52 a.m. MDT).

Radar data from the Utah Testing and Training Range confirmed that the capsule entered Earth’s atmosphere as planned at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. MDT) off the coast of California.

The drogue parachute, the smaller of the two parachutes onboard the capsule, opened after atmospheric entry to help with stability and later separated from the capsule. The main parachute deployed at 10:47 am EDT (8:47 pm EDT). It slowed the capsule down from hypersonic speed to about 11 mph by the time it touched the ground.