After months of fiddling with a canister that contained rocky samples from an historic asteroid, NASA engineers have lastly eliminated two cussed fasteners that seemed to be stopping the area company from gathering the complete quantity of Bennu’s particles.
The OSIRIS-REx curation crew managed to take away the TAGSAM (Contact-and-Go Pattern Acquisition Mechanism) head, the place the majority of the asteroid pattern is saved, NASA introduced in a weblog publish on Thursday. The crew was compelled to develop new instruments to assist take away the 2 fasteners that held the sampler head shut because it landed on Earth in September 2023. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Area Middle in Houston freed the fasteners on January 10.
“Our engineers and scientists have labored tirelessly behind the scenes for months to not solely course of the greater than 70 grams of fabric we have been capable of entry beforehand, but additionally design, develop, and take a look at new instruments that allowed us to maneuver previous this hurdle,” Eileen Stansbery, division chief for ARES (Astromaterials Analysis and Exploration Science) at NASA, mentioned in a press release. “The innovation and dedication of this crew has been outstanding. We’re all excited to see the remaining treasure OSIRIS-REx holds.”
There are nonetheless a couple of disassembly steps left earlier than the rest of the majority pattern is totally revealed and picture specialists can take ultra-high-resolution pictures of it whereas it’s nonetheless contained in the TAGSAM head. Afterwards, the pattern can be eliminated and weighed, and NASA will decide the complete quantity of rocky particles OSIRIS-REx snagged from Bennu.
The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in September 2016 and reached asteroid Bennu in December 2018. The spacecraft snagged items of a small, near-Earth asteroid in October 2020 and commenced making its manner again to Earth in Could 2021. The spacecraft dropped off the pattern within the Utah desert in September 2023, however NASA has been struggling to crack open a spherical sampler head on the finish of an articulated arm that the spacecraft used to seize the pattern.
Two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head couldn’t be eliminated with the present instruments authorized to be used within the OSIRIS-REx glovebox, stopping them from extracting the pattern inside.
The crew did handle to gather some materials from exterior the TAGSAM head. When the aluminum lid to the pattern canister was first eliminated, crew members discovered black mud and particles on the avionics deck of the canister. Additionally they eliminated a few of the materials from contained in the canister with tweezers or a scoop whereas holding down the TAGSAM head’s mylar flap. The whole quantity of the bonus pattern collected is an estimated 8.8 ounces of rock and dirt (250 grams).
In November, the curation crew started work on creating new instruments that would match contained in the glovebox that comprises the canister. “Along with the design problem of being restricted to curation-approved supplies to guard the scientific worth of the asteroid pattern, these new instruments additionally wanted to perform inside the tightly-confined area of the glovebox, limiting their top, weight, and potential arc motion,” Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curator at NASA, mentioned in a press release.
The brand new instruments ended a months lengthy ordeal, and can quickly give us entry to treasured bits of asteroid Bennu.
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