Nasa spacecraft Osiris-Rex grabs rock samples from asteroid in historic mission
- The Osiris-Rex has been sent to obtain material from ancient space rock ‘Bennu’, thought to contain the building blocks of our solar system
- Mission marks first US attempt to gather samples from an asteroid, something Japan has accomplished
After a four-year journey, Nasa’s robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex briefly touched down on asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday to collect rock and dust samples in a precision operation 330 million km (200 million miles) from Earth.
The so-called “Touch-And-Go” or TAG manoeuvre was managed by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, Colorado.
The historic mission was 12 years in the making and rested on a critical 16 second period where the spacecraft performed a delicate autonomous manoeuvre to grab its precious payload: at least 60 grams (two ounces), or a chocolate-bar sized amount of regolith that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system.
If Osiris-Rex successfully comes home in September 2023, it will have collected the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.
“We think we actually might be coming back with a baby picture of what the solar system was like, of what our chemistry was like, billions of years ago,” Nasa scientist Michelle Thaller said.