The site itself is nestled within a crater the size of a tennis court and ringed in building-size boulders. “A piece of primordial rock that has witnessed our solar system’s entire history may now be ready to come home for generations of scientific discovery, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.” “This was an incredible feat – and today we’ve advanced both science and engineering and our prospects for future missions to study these mysterious ancient storytellers of the solar system,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in a statement. The agency will be able to confirm if a sample was successfully collected later and images of the event will be available Wednesday on NASA’s site. I look forward to analyzing the data to determine the mass of sample collected.” “Even though we have some work ahead of us to determine the outcome of the event – the successful contact, the TAGSAM gas firing, and back-away from Bennu are major accomplishments for the team. “After over a decade of planning, the team is overjoyed at the success of today’s sampling attempt,” Lauretta said in a statement. On Tuesday night, the OSIRIS-REx team will go through the data being sent back by the spacecraft. He said he feels “transcendent” and the team is “exuberant” based on the current data. Next stop: Earth 2023! □ /fP7xdOEeOs- NASA's OSIRIS-REx October 20, 2020Įverything went perfectly based on the data returned by the spacecraft, according to Dante Lauretta, the mission’s principal investigator and a professor at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Thanks, everybody, for following along as we journey #ToBennuAndBack! Preliminary data show that today's sample collection event went as planned □ More details to come once all the data from the event are downlinked to Earth. Then, the spacecraft backed away to safety. The arm reached out to collect a sample, which could be between 2 ounces and 2 kilograms. The site is the width of a few parking spaces. To achieve this historic first for NASA, a van-size spacecraft had to briefly touch down its arm in a landing site called Nightingale. That sample will be returned to Earth in 2023. After orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Bennu for nearly two years, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully touched down and reached out its robotic arm to collect a sample from the asteroid’s surface on Tuesday.
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