The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully completed the installation of a container with trapped matter particles from asteroid Bennu inside a special capsule that will deliver it to Earth in 2023. This was announced by Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx Project Manager, at an online briefing held at the Lockheed Martin Flight Center.
"Due to the fact that OSIRIS-REx captured too much matter of the asteroid, we had to completely change our plans and urgently develop a completely new algorithm for the TAGSAM manipulator. Now we can say with certainty that this procedure was completed successfully, both thanks to our own efforts, and the help of our colleagues on other NASA missions who have donated their time to work with long-range space communications antennas,”Burns said.
Last week, OSIRIS-REx touched Bennu's surface for the first time to collect soil samples from it. Later, the mission specialists discovered that the manipulator of the TAGSAM probe captured more matter than planned, due to which the locking mechanism jammed and the captured soil gradually "leaked" into space.
Because of this, the mission team decided to maximize the speed of packing the OSIRIS-REx "catch" inside a sealed capsule designed to deliver this matter to Earth. Unlike probe planting and soil sampling, this procedure is not fully automated. Because of this, it will pass rather slowly, and as a result, if the sequence of actions is unsuccessful, you can lose all the soil.
This procedure began last Tuesday and has already been successfully completed, Burns noted. Scientists hope that almost all of the captured particles and rock fragments are inside the capsule and land on Earth. Thanks to this, planetary scientists will have the first opportunity to study the chemical and isotopic composition of the primary matter of the solar system.