NASA’s OSIRIS-REx: First-ever asteroid sample to drop on Earth tomorrow

After seven long years in space, the mission now faces one of its most daunting challenges—actually delivering the samples to Earth. The spacecraft itself will not enter the planet’s atmosphere but it will “drop” the parcel in a precise trajectory to make it land at a predetermined location in the Utah desert. While doing so, the capsule must protect the sample from heat, vibrations and any contamination from our planet.

For an accurate “parcel drop,” the spacecraft will have to capsule on an exact path and velocity. If the capsule is angled too high during the drop, it will skip off the planet’s atmosphere like a rock skipping across a river. This would land the samples in outer space where they cannot be retrieved. On the other hand, if the capsule is angled too low, it will burn up in our planet’s atmosphere.

OSIRIS-Rex team members from NASA and private companies like KinetX and Lockheed Martin have used computer models to test navigation plans. These simulations take into account many weather, solar activity and space debris scenarios to ensure that the “parcel” will touch down in the target area 13 minutes after it enters the planet’s atmosphere at 8.11 PM IST.

A US military representative checking the mock OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule during a rehearsal for retreival. (NASA/Keegan Barber)

Samples like the one carried by the OSIRIS-REx mission are important because asteroids like Bennu can act as “time capsules” for the earliest history of our solar system. They can preserve chemical signatures from a long time ago when the universe was a younger place. In fact, it is even possible that they contain samples of the ancient building blocks of life.