NASA made headlines on Tuesday when NASA's OSIRIS-REx successfully gathered samples from Asteroid Bennu's surface during a deliberately planned, hours-long orbit maneuver.
The spacecraft used its robotic arm to capture space rock fragments that would eventually be returned to Earth for study. The incident represents a significant landmark for NASA: the organization gathers samples from an asteroid in space for the first time.
"We did it," Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, said during NASA's live broadcast of the event. "We've tagged the surface of the asteroid."
The samples, according to NASA, are predicted to be shipped to Earth in September 2023. Scientists have said that Bennu's precious surface materials may reveal exciting insights into how the solar system came to be.
Asteroids are new arrays of ancient ingredients that created the solar system around 4.5 billion years ago, making it possible to unlock mysteries around planets and Earth's nature by researching space rocks' chemical properties.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission was the first to gather asteroid samples, but it was not the first-ever. The distinction belongs to the Hayabusa project in Japan, which transmitted a few micrograms of material from the Itokawa asteroid in 2010 to Earth.
In February 2019, a second spacecraft, called Hayabusa2, obtained a tiny sample from the asteroid Ryugu. The spaceship is slated to return to Earth with the sample on board in December.
Here's what happened
Yuichi Tsuda, project manager for the Hayabusa2 mission at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, showed support for the OSIRIS-REx mission.
A message to the @OSIRISREx team from our Project Manager, Yuichi Tsuda:
Tomorrow, a new door opens for Solar System exploration. The OREx team should be able to achieve great results with the right decisions and exquisite control. Keep safe, and Godspeed! — HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) October 20, 2020
The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx (short for Sources, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Detection, Security-Regolith Explorer) orbited Bennu from an altitude of about 2,500 feet but spent many hours falling into the surface of the asteroid on Tuesday.
The spaceship is fitted with an 11-foot-long robotic arm that extends down and collects samples from the rock of space.
Soon after 6 p.m. EDT, the spacecraft's arm touched down at a landing site named Nightingale, which NASA claimed was around the size of a pair of parking spaces. It took around 4 1/2 hours for the whole maneuver, which NASA compared to a 'top five' for Bennu.
For less than 16 seconds, the spacecraft had been in touch with the comet. The van-sized probe captured at least 2 ounces of debris from the surface. OSIRIS-REx fired its thrusters during the 'touch-and-go' action to securely walk away from Bennu.
The $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission was launched in September 2016, and almost two years later, the spacecraft arrived at Bennu.
According to NASA, the probe has been imaging the asteroid's surface, observing its structure and beaming back images of the space rock, which is almost as large as the Empire State House. Bennu is situated more than 200 million miles from Earth but has an orbit that can swing the globe to just 4.6 million miles.
As such, they identify Bennu and other near-Earth asteroids as potentially harmful objects. The NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office has estimated that between 2175 and 21999, there is a 1 in 2,700 chance of Bennu reaching Earth.
