Expect Three Days of Contingency Operations as Regolith Leaks from OSIRIS-REx

Bill Jelen

October 26, 2020

Filtered by Tag: bennu

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is a victim of its own success. Five pieces of the asteroid have prevented a Mylar flap from closing, allowing valuable science material to leak out. More material will leak out over three upcoming days of stow activity.

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Captured by the spacecraft’s SamCam camera on Oct. 22, 2020, this series of three images shows that the sampler head on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is full of rocks and dust collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu.  Credit: NASA

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Collects Significant Amount of Asteroid

NASA OSIRIS-REx mission team releases additional information about Touch-and-Go.

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Captured on Oct. 20 during the OSIRIS-REx mission’s Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event, this image shows the SamCam imager’s field of view at the moment when the NASA spacecraft touched down on asteroid Bennu’s surface. The sampling event brought the spacecraft all the way down to sample site Nightingale, and the team on Earth received confirmation of successful touchdown at 6:08 p.m. EDT. Preliminary data show the sampling head touched Bennu’s surface for approximately 6 seconds, after which the spacecraft performed a back-away burn. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Sampling Success: OSIRIS-REx Successfully Gathers Bennu Regolith for Asteroid Sample Return

"...I dreamed of an array of Bennu regolith floating around me." - Dante Lauretta, Principal Investigator, OSIRIS-REx

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A full-scale engineering model of OSIRIS-REx's TAGSAM collector, used to gather samples from the surface of asteroid Bennu.  Photo credit: Jared Haworth / We Report Space

OSIRIS-REx To Attempt TAG of Asteroid Bennu

Asteroid Bennu will have its "close encounter" with OSIRIS-REx on October 20, 2020, as the spacecraft makes contact and collects samples for study back on earth.

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OSIRIS-REx Set For Bennu Orbital Insertion Today

At 2:43:55 PM EST today, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will begin orbiting asteroid Bennu. This will make Bennu, which is only about 1,600 feet across, the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft. Launched on September 8, 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived in the vicinity of Bennu on December 3, 2018.

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