Sample taking on Bennu

[andrew s]

Amazing video https://www.asteroidmission.org/?attachment_id=26458#main

Regards Andrew 

[John]

Astonishing !!!

Thanks for posting this Andrew

[geeklee]

Awesome video, thanks for the link.  

From descriptions of the event I wasn't expecting such a lot of dust and small rocks to be distributed during the nitrogen firing.  I take it the white dome looking instrument that made the TAG event had the filter collecting the particles?

[vlaiv]

I would not call that touch and go

 

[geeklee]

13 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I would not call that touch and go

 

The joining of the 82 images (1.25s between frames) definitely makes it look much more "bank job snatch and grab" 😁

A little bit of follow up here stating the closing (10cm/sec) and exit speeds (40cm/sec)... although 10cm/sec still seems quite fast for something like this!

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/osiris-rex-tags-surface-of-asteroid-bennu/

 

[Peter Drew]

As a result, Bennu will collide with the Earth in 2216.      🙂

[vlaiv]

46 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

As a result, Bennu will collide with the Earth in 2216.      🙂

I'm not going to worry about future collisions now that I've seen what sort of asteroid punching capability we have

We can blast them to bits with 10cm/s at any time

 

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by vlaiv

[markse68]

what was the reason for doing it this way and not staying a bit longer?

[John]

2 hours ago, markse68 said:

what was the reason for doing it this way and not staying a bit longer?

I think it's not so much a case of landing as it is moving alongside and docking with an object as small as Bennu. It's gravitational pull is so low.

They would have had to find a way to anchor the craft to the loose surface. Not easy I suspect.

[markse68]

44 minutes ago, John said:

I think it's not so much a case of landing as it is moving alongside and docking with an object as small as Bennu. It's gravitational pull is so low.

They would have had to find a way to anchor the craft to the loose surface. Not easy I suspect.

Ah yes- that makes sense!

Thanks John

[Pixies]

I love how they intend to measure the mass of the sample they've taken, once back orbiting the asteroid.

Osiris-Rex will extend the sample arm and then go into a spin, measuring its angular momentum. They'll compare this figure with one taken when they did this earlier with no sample, and the difference will give them the mass of the sample.

If they haven't got enough, they'll get some more in another TAG.

[johninderby]

Bit of a problem.

 

News from NASA

Ai Nasa probe sent to collect rock from an asteroid several hundred million kilometres from Earth has grabbed so much that samples are spilling out. 

Officials behind the Osiris-Rex probe, which landed on Bennu earlier this week, say the collection operation may have performed too well. Pictures beamed back to Earth show a rock has wedged open the door of a container and a fraction of the sample is leaking, Nasa says.

"A substantial fraction of the required collected mass is seen escaping," head of mission Dante Lauretta said.

"Time is of the essence," Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa's associate administrator for science, told reporters as the space agency focuses on making sure no more is lost. 

[markse68]

On 22/10/2020 at 20:34, Pixies said:

I love how they intend to measure the mass of the sample they've taken, once back orbiting the asteroid.

Osiris-Rex will extend the sample arm and then go into a spin, measuring its angular momentum. They'll compare this figure with one taken when they did this earlier with no sample, and the difference will give them the mass of the sample.

If they haven't got enough, they'll get some more in another TAG.

That’s ingenious but couldn’t they have just used a camera to estimate the volume collected?

[discardedastro]

On 24/10/2020 at 15:09, markse68 said:

That’s ingenious but couldn’t they have just used a camera to estimate the volume collected?

They planned on doing both - but the expectation was that most of what they'd capture is dust, which would be trapped in a hard-to-observe "rim" around the collection head.

As it is, they've picked up both a lot of dust and debris (they think, visually) as well as larger chunks of rock, which they can see visually - meaning they have a lot more sample than expected. So they're now skipping the spin-measurement procedure and getting it stowed away ASAP, since it's acting as a liquid right now and may "slosh" out again unless they pack it up.

The sampler head:

Edited October 25, 2020 by discardedastro

[Tiny Clanger]

Back when this launched (2016 I think) I was teaching some 11 year olds ( I'd 'done' space with them the year before as a supply teacher because the regular teacher was delighted to hand over any and all science to me ...  ) . The pupils were suitably impressed when I showed them how to get the classes name on OSIRIS- REx ( along with thousands of others !) and very pleased with the certificate we printed out and stuck on the notice board. Wonder if any of them saw mention of the arrival at Bennu and remembered ?