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After ii years in space, NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe has reached its destination: the asteroid Bennu. The rendezvous is already a meaning achievement, but the mission is far from over. Eventually, OSIRIS-Male monarch will graze the surface of Bennu to selection up a tiny scrap of material to send back to World.

OSIRIS-Male monarch is part of NASA's New Frontiers programme forth with Juno and New Horizons. It launched in September 2016 aboard an Atlas Five rocket, angling for the encounter with Bennu that occurred on December 3rd. OSIRIS-REx needed just a small-scale flare-up from its engines to line up with Bennu for the kickoff of several mapping runs.

Later this year, OSIRIS-King will tighten its path around Bennu to enter into a stable orbit of the asteroid. Currently, the probe is swinging past Bennu at an altitude of 12 miles (19 kilometers). By early on next year, the team plans to have OSIRIS-REx passing just 0.87 miles (one.four kilometers) above the surface of Bennu. From this vantage, the probe can take loftier-resolution scans of the terrain in training for its big moment.

NASA plans to take its time with the mapping and initial scientific discipline stage of the mission. OSIRIS-Rex will orbit and study Bennu for almost 18 months at close range, giving scientists a skillful idea of what its surface is similar. In summertime 2020, OSIRIS-REx volition approach the surface and deploy the bear upon-and-get-sample acquisition mechanism (TAGSAM), a 10-pes robot arm a small scoop at the terminate. TAGSAM volition make contact with the asteroid for almost five seconds. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, a puff of compressed nitrogen will kicking upward regolith to exist captured in the scoop.

OSIRIS-REx could collect up to 4.4 pounds (ii kilograms) of textile from Bennu, simply it may be every bit piddling as a few ounces. We just don't know enough about the surface composition to say for certain. Any information technology obtains will go packed away in an aerodynamic sample return canister. OSIRIS-Male monarch will exist washed with its science mission at that point. NASA will simply take to wait for the probe's orbit to bring it in position to send the sample back to Globe. That should happen around March 2021, and the sample could land on Earth as before long every bit September 2023.

Scientists believe examining pristine textile from objects like Bennu could help the states understand the origins of the solar system. Before all that, nosotros're sure to go some fantastic shut-upward pictures of the asteroid.

At present read: Japan'southward Hayabusa ii Spacecraft Reaches Asteroid, Prepares to Collect Sample, NASA Designs HAMMER Spacecraft to Deflect or Nuke Unsafe Asteroids, and Chinese Scientists Want to Capture a Small Asteroid and State information technology on Earth