Two years ago, in September 2016. OSIRIS-REx launched...
[rocket engine burn] >>ANNOUNCER’S VOICE: And liftoff
of OSIRIS-REx! [cheering] Oh my gosh! Woo! ...NASA’s first
mission to go collect a sample from an asteroid and return it
to Earth. Now it’s August of 2018. and OSIRIS-REx is finally
approaching its target, asteroid Bennu. [music starts] What is
the approach phase of the OSIRIS-REx mission? The approach
phase is when we reach about two million kilometers from the
asteroid Bennu. You know we’ve been approaching Bennu ever
since we launched, but once we reach this period where we’re
about two million kilomters away, that’s when our cameras
can start to pick up Bennu and see it as a single pixel in the
image. So what will you be doing throughout this approach phase?
Sure, so I’m part of the flight dynamics team, and we’re
responsible for navigating the spacecraft. During the approach
phase, we’ll figure out our best estimate of where the spacecraft
is relative to the asteroid and also where the asteroid is
relative to the rest of the solar system. And during this
phase, will you be looking out for any sort of hazards around
the asteroid, like little moons or dust? Yeah absolutely. We
have specific science observation campaigns where
they’ll be looking for small satellite possibilities or
activity on the asteroid. So Lori, I know your background is
planetary science. As a planetary scientist, how excited
are you about the OSIRIS-REx mission and about bringing a
sample of an asteroid back for the first time for NASA? This is
incredibly exciting. The asteroids are the building
blocks of the solar system, that’s what built and made up
our planets. They possibly carry the building blocks, the
molecules that could lead to life. But even more than that,
most of our missions we send a satellite to go orbit a planet
or maybe a lander to go land on the surface. But they stay there
and do their science at that location. OSIRIS-REx is going to
grab a sample and bring it back to Earth. And that is really
special and unique. We can not only analyze that sample today,
but then we can save that sample and as our knowledge grows in
the future and as our laboratory capabilities grow in the future,
we can go back and reanalyze that sample. It will be there
for us to keep learning from for years and years, decades and
decades to come. OSIRIS-REx will arrive at Bennu in December of
this year, 2018, and then it will spend the next year and a
half studying the asteroid. In July of 2020, OSIRIS-REx will
collect a sample from the surface of Bennu, and then it
will deliver that sample to Earth in 2023. So stay tuned
over the next several months and years to learn about the
spacecraft’s progress in helping us unveil the mysteries of our
solar system’s formation.
[OSIRIS- REx logo]
[satellite swooshes by, beep beep, beep beep, beep beep]
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center www.nasa.gov/goddard