YORK, Pa. — The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on its way back to Earth after successfully departing asteroid Bennu Monday afternoon. The spacecraft is carrying samples from the asteroid that scientists from around the world will study.
According to Danny Glavin, Associate Director for Solar System Science at NASA Goddard, this is the "golden age" for robotic exploration and sample return.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been exploring asteroid Bennu for about two and a half years.
The goal of the mission was to learn more about the asteroid and gather 60 grams of sample from the asteroid. Glavin tells Fox43 that the spacecraft was able to collect much more than planned. "That was the most exciting thing," he says. "It was like "wow," we got much more sample than we had anticipated."
OSIRIS-REx was able to gather about 2 cups worth of asteroid, which is a soft and porous substance, similar to shaving cream.
"And that may not sound like a lot but we have techniques that can analyze just microscopic grains, just less than a grain of sugar, so two cups is a lot of sample," Glavin says.
This sample is the largest sample collected by a NASA mission since the Apollo astronauts returned with rocks from the moon.
Glavin hopes that these samples will help scientists understand how our solar system formed, how the Earth formed, and even how human life began.
"One of the theories is that asteroids and comets actually delivered the organic building blocks of life, the seeds of life, so for me it’s going to be really cool to look at this material, which has never seen Earth... and actually look for these chemical building blocks of life and see if asteroids could have played a role.”
Not all of the sample will be studied immediately. Glavin tells Fox43 that about 75 percent of it will be stored for future use.
"We'll have these samples for generations, inspiring young kids for decades."
Although the asteroid is 178 million miles (287 million kilometers) away, Osiris-Rex will put another 1.4 billion miles (2.3 billion kilometers) on its odometer to catch up with Earth.
The SUV-size spacecraft will circle the sun twice before delivering its small sample capsule to Utah's desert floor on Sept. 24, 2023, to end the more than $800 million mission. It launched from Cape Canaveral in 2016.
NASA has lots more asteroid projects planned.
Set to launch in October, a spacecraft named Lucy will fly past swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter, while a spacecraft known as Dart will blast off in November in an attempt to redirect an asteroid as part of a planetary protection test. Then in 2022, the Psyche spacecraft will take off for an odd, metallic asteroid bearing the same name. None of these missions, however, involve sample return.