• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

NASA Brings Back Actual Sample Of Asteroid But Can’t Open The Lid

October 26, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

When you are firing a spacecraft at an asteroid, touching the spacecraft down on that asteroid very briefly to collect a sample, and then returning the sample to Earth, there are a lot of opportunities for problems.

Despite the difficulty of the task, NASA successfully returned a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth in late September. Since then, scientists have begun to open the sample, a long, slow, and delicate process, which the team has spent months rehearsing.

Advertisement

Unfortunately, they have now hit a slight snag. They cannot open the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) to access a lot of the sample.

“In the last week, the team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston changed its approach to opening the TAGSAM head, which contained the bulk of the rocks and dust collected by the spacecraft in 2020,” NASA said in an update. “After multiple attempts at removal, the team discovered two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head could not be removed with the current tools approved for use in the OSIRIS-REx glovebox.”

This may sound like a small problem (surely NASA can borrow a spanner?) but the problem is that any tools used by the team must be able to fit inside the “glovebox”, which flows nitrogen in order to keep the samples pristine and free from contamination by our own atmosphere.

A

The “glovebox” is important, but restrictive.

Image credit: NASA

As such, the team needs to figure out how to access the samples using tools available to them, or new tools that fit inside the glovebox that will not compromise the samples during collection. 

Advertisement

The team has been able to access 70.3 grams (2.48 ounces) of rocks and dust from outside and inside the sample head, with a portion of the samples accessible through a mylar flap. That surpasses their initial goal of 60 grams (2.12 ounces). However, there is still material inside which cannot be accessed via the mylar flap, being kept inside by those fasteners.

NASA says the team will develop and practice a new technique for removing the fasteners in the next few weeks, while processing the samples they have already removed for study.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – Liverpool’s Klopp says Van Dijk fit, Keita fine after return to club
  2. Buy now, pay later plans not shrinking credit card loans, says TransUnion
  3. Paralyzed Man Silently Spells Out Sentences Using New Brain-Computer Interface
  4. Parents Who Phub Could Push Their Kids Towards Phone “Addiction”

Source Link: NASA Brings Back Actual Sample Of Asteroid But Can't Open The Lid

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Losing Buckets Of Water Every Second – And It’s Got Cyanide
  • “A Historic Shift”: Renewables Generated More Power Than Coal Globally For First Time
  • The World’s Oldest Known Snake In Captivity Became A Mom At 62 – No Dad Required
  • Biggest Ocean Current On Earth Is Set To Shift, Spelling Huge Changes For Ecosystems
  • Why Are The Continents All Bunched Up On One Side Of The Planet?
  • Why Can’t We Reach Absolute Zero?
  • “We Were Onto Something”: Highest Resolution Radio Arc Shows The Lowest Mass Dark Object Yet
  • How Headsets Made For Cyclists Are Giving Hearing And Hope To Kids With Glue Ear
  • It Was Thought Only One Mammal On Earth Had Iridescent Fur – Turns Out There’s More
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version