Asteroid Sample Return Capsule Touches Down in Utah, Completing Seven-Year Voyage
A saucer-shaped capsule carrying asteroid fragments that may hold clues about the birth of the solar system landed in Utah on Sunday, marking the end of a dramatic seven-year, four-billion-mile journey. The capsule, released from the OSIRIS-REx mothership four hours earlier, descended through Earth’s atmosphere and touched down with the assistance of a parachute.
The 110-pound sample return capsule, measuring 31 inches wide, contained a half-pound of rocks and soil collected in 2020 from an asteroid named Bennu. Traveling at a blistering speed of 27,700 mph, the capsule hit the top of the atmosphere at an altitude of 82 miles.
During its descent, the heat shield of the capsule endured temperatures of over 5,000 degrees due to atmospheric friction. The capsule’s braking force was 32 times the force of gravity as it approached landing in the Utah Test and Training Range.
The nail-biting landing was a success, with the capsule surviving the intense heat and deploying a stabilizing drogue parachute at an altitude of 20 miles. The main parachute, measured at 24-feet-wide, deployed earlier than expected at 20,000 feet, resulting in a slightly early touchdown. The capsule landed at an expected speed of 11 mph, and recovery crews were quickly dispatched to assess its condition.
Scientists and engineers were relieved to find that the capsule remained intact with no signs of breaches that could have contaminated the precious samples inside. The capsule was then transported to a temporary air-filtered clean room, where it will undergo initial disassembly before being shipped to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for detailed analysis.
The samples collected from Bennu are considered to be the largest collection of extraterrestrial material since the Apollo moon program. They represent the raw materials that formed the sun and the planets of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Dante Lauretta, the Principal Investigator at the University of Arizona, expressed excitement about the potential insights the samples could provide regarding the origin of life and the habitability of Earth. Lauretta believes that the carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu may have brought the necessary components for life to Earth during its early formation.
OSIRIS-REx, an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer, is NASA’s first mission to return samples from an asteroid. Previous missions by Japanese spacecraft have also returned samples from asteroids.
Once analyzed in Houston, the samples will be shared with researchers around the world for further study. This significant achievement represents the culmination of years of planning and engineering, and the start of a new phase of scientific research into the mysteries of the solar system and the origins of life.