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Text on screen: What is OSIRIS-REx and where is it going?
OSIRIS-REx
is a wonderfully exciting mission. We're actually going
out an asteroid. And the reason asteroids are so
exciting is that they're actually a little bit of the early solar system.
OSIRIS-REx is actually going to be flying around this asteroid
doing a wonderful mapping mission over the course of a year.
And the exciting thing about thing about this asteroid - as you can see
it's about the size of a mountain or a very very large building.
It's about half a kilometer across.
So we are actually going out to this asteroid and what's going on today
is we are actually using the Earth's gravity to whip
us into the right orbit to get there.
Text on screen: Earth's gravity will slingshot OSIRIS-REx to the asteroid. How does that work?
We're actually going to be sling shotting by the Earth, that''s
our closest approach. And so what that means is OSIRIS-REx is
going to be flying very close to our planet and the gravity of our planet
is actually going to help deflect the spacecraft to get it at the right
angle to intercept the asteriod. So this is something that actually saves
us some rocket fuel. It also saves us some time.
We're very clever because we can use the Earth's gravity to get to the
place we need to go.
Text on screen: Asteroids are time capsules from the beginning of our solar system. What's so exciting about this particular asteroid.
Well Bennu really is a relic of what the solar system was like
billions of years ago. So a long time ago there were
these building blocks that got made into planets, but some of those little
objects stayed around. A lot of those entered through
the atmosphere of the Earth as meteorites. Bennu is
actually a chance to go and get a pristine sample.
So we're going to be scanning the asteroid, finding a really good
place to take a sample, then we're actually going to be returning
about 200 grams - sorry about 60 grams to about a kilogram -
worth of material from this asteroid. This will
actually be the largest sample returned since the Apollo program.
And the thing that is so exciting about this to scientists is
while we have some samples of asteroids, called meteorites, these things
have fallen through our atmosphere. The chemistry has changed, they've
been heated up. By going to Bennu and taking a pristine sample
of this we actually have a little bit of the solar system
that is unchanged for billions of years. We can find out what
the chemistry was like, what the conditions were like
billions of years ago.
Text on screen: What's it going to look like when NASA high-fives an asteroid to collect a sample.
I am really look forward to this day. This is going to be a really exciting day coming up
in a couple of years where the OSIRIS-REx flies
very close to Bennu and sort of does what we call a high-five maneuver -
kind of gives it a little smack and there's a little vacuum device
that we hope is going to collect somewhere between 60 grams to a kilograms
worth of material. That material is then put
in a capsule and that capsule is going to be sent back to Earth.
So it will be sent back to Earth and parachute through our
atmosphere. It will actually be landing somewhere in the Great Salt Lake
of Utah. So this really is a sample of the
early solar system coming back. And I believe scientists
will be studying this sample, probably for generations.
Text on screen: Where can we learn more?
Well to find out
more about OSIRIS-REx and all the different ways that we're studying the
solar system you can actually go to nasa.gov/osirisrex.
Find out what's going on today find out all
about the upcoming rendezvous with the asteroid and find out about the
plans to return a pristine sample of the early solar system.