Washington:
The US space probe Osiris-Rex on Monday left the orbit of the asteroid Bennu, from which it collected dust samples last year, to start its lengthy journey back to Earth.
The probe nonetheless has a vast distance to cover just before it lands in the Utah desert on September 24, 2023.
Osiris-Rex is “now moving away over 600 miles an hour from Bennu, on its way home,” Dante Lauretta, head of the mission, mentioned on NASA’s video broadcast of the occasion.
The spacecraft’s thrusters had been engaged without having incident for seven minutes to place the probe on the right trajectory home, a journey of 1.4 billion miles (2.3 billion kiometers).
It is carrying more than 60 grams of dust and fragments from the asteroid, the biggest sample collected by NASA because the Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions.
To reach this purpose, the US space agency launched a higher-threat operation in October 2020: the probe came into make contact with with the asteroid for a couple of seconds, and a blast of compressed nitrogen was emitted to raise the dust sample which was then captured.
The surprise for NASA was the probe’s arm sank a number of centimeters into the surface of the asteroid, displaying the scientists that “the surfaces of these rubble pile asteroids are very loosely consolidated,” mentioned Lauretta.
The entire mission pretty much came to nought when NASA realized a couple of days later that the valve of the collection compartment was failing to close, letting fragments escape into space.
But the valuable cargo was ultimately secured just after getting transferred to a capsule fixed in the spacecraft’s center.
In two and a half years, that capsule will be released a couple of hours just before entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and will be slowed down by a parachute technique for its landing.
The samples will then be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, but 75 % will be kept intact to be studied by future generations, who will have sophisticated technologies that have not however been designed, the agency mentioned.
The evaluation must enable scientists improved realize the formation of the solar technique and the improvement of Earth as a habitable planet.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)