covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias after orbiting
the near-earth
asteroid bennu for nearly two years
nasa's osiris-rex
spacecraft successfully touched down and
reached out its robotic arm to collect a
sample from the asteroid's surface
last week the sample will be returned to
earth in 2023
to achieve this historic first for nasa
a van sized spacecraft had to briefly
touch down its arm in a landing site
called nightingale
the site is the width of a few parking
spaces
the arm reached out to collect a sample
which could be between 2 ounces and 2
kilograms
then the spacecraft backed away to
safety we have
never done this before we're actually
going to collect a sample and bring it
back down to earth
for further examination by scientists
in order to achieve that objective the
osiris-rex spacecraft has been
navigating around bennu for about the
last two years
studying it in great detail and also
overcoming a number of challenges
that bennu has presented we were looking
for locations on venue that were 50
meters in diameter
relatively flat and covered with fine
grained material and by fine grain
material i mean stuff that's the size of
a dime or smaller
we realized that there were no sites on
bennu that even came close to meeting
this criteria
everywhere we looked was too small and
covered with boulders
so we actually had to fly a number of
additional close passes over the
asteroid
and rethink our entire plan for grabbing
the sample
the tag event is our touch and go event
which is where we'll actually be
retrieving the sample from asteroid
bennu
we start with a series of maneuvers one
of them being the checkpoint
burn which is where we'll actually check
our position velocity
in relation to the sample sites and then
the match point burn
about 10 minutes later we'll zero out
our horizontal velocity relative
to the surface and then about 10 minutes
after that we make contact with the tag
sam
fire the gas bottle and then back away
and we hope to get
at least 60 grams of sample and then
we'll be able to store
that and bring it back down to earth
everything went perfectly based on the
data returned by the spacecraft
according to dante loretta
the mission's principal investigator and
a professor at the university of arizona
lunar and planetary laboratory he said
he feels transcendent and the team is
exuberant
based on the current data loretta said
in a statement
after over a decade of planning the team
is overjoyed at the success of today's
sampling attempt
i look forward to analyzing the data and
to determine the mass of sample
collected
we have to verify that we have a proper
sample
first we're going to image the tag sam
head by sticking in front of one of the
cameras then we're going to do a
maneuver called the sample mass
measurement in which we stick out the
arm and we spin the spacecraft
in order for us to decide if we've
collected enough mass to be able to stow
and return home or if we have to try
again preliminary data show the sampling
head touch bennu's surface for
approximately six seconds
after which the spacecraft performed a
back away burn
thomas zerbuckin associate administrator
for nasa's science mission directorate
said
in a statement a piece of primordial
rock that has witnessed our solar
system's entire history
may now be ready to come home for
generations of scientific discovery
and we can't wait to see what comes next
the mission which stands for origin
spectral interpretation
resource identification security
regolith explorer
launched in september 2016. since
arriving at bennu the spacecraft and its
cameras have been collecting and sending
back data and images to help the team
learn more about the asteroids
composition
and map out the best potential landing
sites to collect samples
the main event of the mission is the
touch and go sample collection event or
tag
that occurred last week the event took
about four and a half hours total to
unfold
and the spacecraft executed three
maneuvers to collect the sample from
which could help scientists understand
not only more about asteroids that could
impact earth
but also about how planets formed and
life began
big thanks to roy w nash and our
community of viewers for submitting
stories to us this week
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category5 from the category 5 tv
newsroom i'm becca ferguson
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