• 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 Is Waiting For A Special Delivery – From Deep Space!

July 25, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

In two months, the asteroid sample collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will come down to Earth. On September 24, a capsule looking like something from a 60s sci-fi show will fly through the atmosphere and land in the Utah desert. The team has practiced the collection of the capsule several times, and last week they were able to do the most realistic dress rehearsal yet, right where the capsule will come crashing down.

The stage for this incredible delivery is the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. That’s about 130 kilometers (81 miles) southwest of Salt Lake City. OSIRIS-REx will drop the capsule containing the sample and continue to fly towards a different asteroid, the notoriously dangerous Apophis. The capsule has no guidance, so it will land somewhere within an ellipse of 58 by 14 kilometers (36 by 9 miles).

Advertisement
A helicopter practices transporting a mock sample capsule, packed for travel, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.

A helicopter carrying the mock capsule during rehearsal.

Image credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

The team practiced collecting soil samples, prepping the capsule for transportation, and even flying the helicopter to where the capsule will be brought back. There it will be prepared and taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where its precious cargo will begin to be analyzed.

“That is where the science canister itself will be opened. It will be opened in a specialized clean room and inside a glovebox,” Sandy Freund, the OSIRIS-REx mission operations manager for Lockheed Martin, previously told IFLScience. “The first time the sample will be exposed will happen down at Houston.”

OSIRIS-REx team members practice getting a mock sample capsule packed for its helicopter flight to a clean room on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. On July 18-20, 2023, the team rehearsed retrieving a mock sample capsule at the location where the real one, with samples of asteroid Bennu, will land on Sept. 24

The team practiced how to safely prepare the capsule for helicopter transport.

Image credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

On October 20, 2020, the spacecraft flew down towards the surface of Asteroid Bennu to collect some soil. The goal was to get at least 60 grams (2 ounces) of material, but the mission was actually too good. It collected so much stuff that some large rocks blocked the sampler head, leading to some material flowing out. Regardless, NASA estimated that between 400 and 1,000 grams (14-35 ounces) of material were collected.

Asteroid Bennu was selected because it is believed to have changed very little since the formation of the Solar System. Studying its properties is like opening a time capsule left over from the birth of the planets.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – FIFA backs down on threat to fine Premier clubs who play South American players
  2. U.S. House passes abortion rights bill, outlook poor in Senate
  3. Soccer-Brighton held to goalless draw by unimpressive Arsenal
  4. Don’t Throw Away The Leaves On Your Lawn This Fall, Say Experts

Source Link: NASA Is Waiting For A Special Delivery – From Deep Space!

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • 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