Asteroid sample collecting spaceprobes.

[Sandhi Yudha]

Tonight NASA's OSIRIS-REx will perform the first attempt for sample collecting at the 1999 RQ36 / 101955 Bennu asteroid. The plan is to return at least 60 gr of dust, sand and rocks to Earth. Hopefully one attempt is enough.

WATCH: OSIRIS-REx Sample Collection Activities - OSIRIS-REx Mission

NASA will broadcast coverage of a first for the agency as its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission attempts to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6:12 p.m. EDT. Live coverage of the spacecraft’s descent...

www.asteroidmission.org

Nasa's Osiris-Rex probe aims for daring 'high five' with asteroid Bennu

Osiris-Rex will make the briefest of contacts with Asteroid Bennu to try to pick up rock samples.

www.bbc.com

Precisielanding op 333 miljoen kilometer afstand vertelt ons meer over ontstaan aarde

Planetoïde Bennu zweeft al miljarden jaren ongestoord door de ruimte. De grondstoffen die NASA erop verzamelt kunnen meer vertellen over het ontstaan van de aarde.

nos.nl

The OSIRIS-REx will not be the first spaceprobe collecting and returning astrrpod material to Earth, that will be the Hayabusa 2, if everything goes as planned. Hayabusa2 was launched on 3 December 2014 and rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu on 27 June 2018. It surveyed the asteroid for a year and a half and took samples. It left the asteroid in November 2019 and is expected to return to Earth on 6 December 2020.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

The sample collection was successful, but NASA has still to find out how much material is collected.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Successfully Touches Asteroid - NASA

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft unfurled its robotic arm Tuesday, and in

www.nasa.gov

Gelukt! Ruimtesonde OSIRIS-REx haalt succesvol bodemmateriaal van Bennu

Het blijft nog even spannend of er wel voldoende materiaal verzameld is. De Amerikaanse ruimtesonde OSIRIS-REx is er afgelopen nacht in geslaagd om wat

www.scientias.nl

 

[kato]

The OSIRIS-REx will not be the first spaceprobe collecting and returning astrrpod material to Earth, that will be the Hayabusa 2, if everything goes as planned.

Actually the first one was Hayabusa 1, bringing 1500 grains from Itokawa to Earth in 2010.

Hayabusa 2 is the second spacecraft of virtually the same type, currently enroute back to Earth (planned to dump its reentry capsule on Australia in about 6 weeks). Unlike Osiris-REX, Hayabusa first bombed the asteroid - with a EFP shaped-charge projectile - in order to be able to sample sub-surface material. It also performed multiple samplings in different sites.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

Some bad news and good news.
The bad news ia that OSIRIS-REx is loosing small amounts of collected material (dust and sand).
The good news is that the spaceprobe succeeded to collect 400 gr of material, more than the 60 gr necessary to make this program successful.

NASA-sonde verliest kostbaar gruis van planetoïde

De ruimtesonde is woensdag met zo veel kracht op Bennu geland dat stenen zijn komen vast te zitten onder de deksel van de monsterhouder. Daardoor lekt er materiaal weg in de ruimte.

nos.nl

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx was so good at grabbing asteroid rocks that they’re overflowing

The OSIRIS-REx team is racing to store its sample before the rocks escape into space

www.theverge.com

 

[kato]

Hayabusa 2 is the second spacecraft of virtually the same type, currently enroute back to Earth (planned to dump its reentry capsule on Australia in about 6 weeks).

To clarify: The planned arrival is exactly 6 weeks from today, on December 6th.

Hayabusa 2, after delivering the sample capsule, is planned to enter a 10-year extended mission involving a flyby at a larger L-Type asteroid in 2026 and a rendezvous and possible landing at a small, fast-rotating C-Type asteroid in 2031.

 

[kato]

Attached below is a picture of one of the guns Hayabusa 2 carries.

These are single-shot guns firing a 77-grain projectile at 300 m/s, roughly comparable to .32 ACP in power on target. The projector assembly itself is about the size of a pistol (without grip). The projectile is 10mm riding on a sabot in a 17mm (.67-inch) diameter smoothbore barrel.

Operationally these are mounted above the sampler horn and fire into the ground from about 50 cm distance. Hayabusa 2 carries three of these, with two used at Ryugu and one remaining unfired for possible operation during the extended mission (it's been mentioned along with the single remaining target marker sphere).




The mechanism of the gun is actually quite interesting - since they are used to kick up material for sampling they had to make sure operating the gun doesn't contaminate the sample.

The explosive used for combustion is a KClO4 / TiH2 mixture, essentially flash powder as used in pyrotechnics - the KClO4 acts as an oxidizer, the mixture is long-term stable over years. The combustion gasses are contained by a captive sabot - the sabot, driving the projectile forward, is caught at the muzzle, crushed against it (it's made of metal itself) and designed to seal off the muzzle to prevent gasses from exiting.

The projectile itself is made of pure Tantalum, which can be easily picked out of the sample. Since it is intended for operations in a vacuum it does not need to be quite aerodynamically shaped - see below, that's the bullet on the sabot. The cavity i think is for making the bullet intentionally bounce into an angle instead of continuing straight on when impacting.



In addition to the three guns Hayabusa 2 in weaponry also carried a 6.5-kg space mine with a shaped-charge EFP warhead that it threw at Ryugu to create a crater, digging up sub-surface material. For some measure of scale of that explosion, Hayabusa 2 moved to the opposite side of the asteroid before triggering it, with the explosion observed by a camera drone specifically deployed for that purpose.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

Hayabusa 2's capsule is back on Earth!

Hayabusa-2: Capsule with asteroid samples in 'perfect' shape

A team retrieves a capsule carrying the first significant quantities of rock from an asteroid.

www.bbc.com

Japanse capsule met gruis van planetoïde geland in Australië

De sonde pikte het stukje van planetoïde Ryugu in februari 2019 op, nadat het een klein kogeltje van 5 gram had afgevuurd op het oppervlak.

nos.nl

Its still unclear how much dust is collected from the asteroid.

 

[kato]

First chamber has been opened:



The actual color of the sample is rather coal black. The amount in the chamber should be on the order of several cm³. The larger grains there should be in the region of 3-5 mm diameter, about 200 times the size of the grains recovered by Hayabusa 1 from Itokawa.

The other two chambers should be opened today or tomorrow (Japan time). Since there were only two samplings on the ground one of the chambers should be mostly empty. Some finer dust was found in the sample catcher as well, i.e. outside the chamber.

In addition gas has been sampled both from the return capsule in Australia and from inside the sample chamber. As this gas does not match Earth's atmosphere by composition JAXA hails this as the first gas sample retrieved from deep space. The gas is produced by the solid sample outgassing as it is being heated (during reentry) and continues to go on due to the higher ambient temperature on Earth.

 

[kato]

Its still unclear how much dust is collected from the asteroid.

The sample catcher has been weighed - that's that whole structure in the above image, which contains the three sample chambers. Material collected in these amounts to 5.4 gramms. This does not include the dust that has been found at the bottom of the chamber in which the sample catcher was housed during flight.

For scale of those 5.4g - the design requirement for Hayabusa 2 was 0.1g, the expected number about 1.0g, the "ideal conditions" retrieval for three samplings would have been about 10g.

 

[kato]

Pebbles in Chamber C are considerably larger than in Chamber A above:



This is the subsurface material excavated before the second landing by firing the SCI space mine at Ryugu (with the size and operating principle of an anti-tank mine).

The marked "artificial object?" in the top left so far hasn't been examined up close, but is presumed to be a piece of aluminium foil dislodged from the sampler horn when Hayabusa 2 fired its gun into the ground during the second landing right next to it.

Surface material from Chamber A similarly placed in an external container for comparison:


Both images published by Jaxa today. Chamber B and C had been opened on the 21st, Chamber B was empty as expected.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

The Osiris-Rex spaceprobe is after finishing its visit to the asteroid Bennu, on its way back home. Osiris-Rex is still some 287.000.000 km from Earth and is expected to arrive in September 2023.

Nasa craft carrying 4.5bn-year-old asteroid dust begins long trek home

Scientists believe the dust sample may provide clues on the formation of the Solar System.

www.bbc.com

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

This spaceprobe will study seven asteroids, but it will not collect dust samples.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will launch NASA’s Lucy spacecraft today on Saturday 16 October 2021. Built by Lockheed Martin and led by the Southwest Research Institute, Lucy will fly by seven Trojan asteroids, a unique family of asteroids that orbit the sun in front of and behind Jupiter. The rocket will fly in the 401 vehicle configuration with a four-meter fairing, no solid rocket boosters, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.

So the Lucy mission, NASA’s latest solar system explorer, will leave Earth to begin a series of ever-larger orbital loops around the sun, eventually reaching the distance of Jupiter in 2027. Then the mission will fly by five asteroids in 15 months before taking another lap around the sun, setting up for a final flyby of a binary pair of asteroids in 2033.

NASA’s Lucy mission will be the first to explore a population of ancient asteroids – Spaceflight Now

 

[kato]

This is the largest piece retrieved from Ryugu by Hayabusa 2:



It's 10.345mm wide and weighs 138.1mg.

The curation team at JAXA last month published its publicly available catalogue of all objects retrieved from Ryugu:

https://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/curation/hayabusa2/

It includes high-resolution images of all 404 particles heavier than 100µg as well as of 33 "aggregates" (dust piles), in addition to multiple FTIR spectra for each object - e.g. spectra from 21 different spots on the above particle. For most objects it also includes hyperspectral analysis using MicrOmega, for some it includes stereo images and elevation maps. The objects vary extremely in shape; spectra show hydroxy groups and various carbon bonds.

24 of these particles were afterwards shipped to NASA, 4 will apparently be used for "outreach", i.e. exhibition, 24 have been transferred to two Japanese universities and "approximately" 50 further samples (out of a selection of 74 objects) will be loaned out as part of a first research call for which one can apply now - there will be more such calls over the next few years, 15% of the overall mass is reserved for this purpose. These objects are labeled with their purposes in the above database, the above largest piece is not among them.

Also included - high-res photos only - are 6 separate objects dislodged from the spacecraft when it fired during its landings and swooped up by the sampler horn and brought back to Earth. The particle marked "artificial object?" in the above post about the opening of the sample chambers from December 2020 is one of these six.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

The Osiris-Rex spaceprobe is after finishing its visit to the asteroid Bennu, on its way back home. Osiris-Rex is still some 287.000.000 km from Earth and is expected to arrive in September 2023.

Nasa craft carrying 4.5bn-year-old asteroid dust begins long trek home

Scientists believe the dust sample may provide clues on the formation of the Solar System.

www.bbc.com

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) has returned yesterday on Earth. This spaceprobe started the scientific research in december 2018 on planetoïde (101955) Bennu. After a period if two years of research, it landed and took a sample in Oktober 2020 and it entered the Earth atmosphere and landed in Utah on 24 September 2023.

Here we can see a video from NASA after the landing with the first persons approaching and doing a visual inspection of the spacecraft and surrounding area. I expect (and hope) that it doesn't carry hazardous micro organisms.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1705968532041687369

 

[ngatimozart]

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) has returned yesterday on Earth. This spaceprobe started the scientific research in december 2018 on planetoïde (101955) Bennu. After a period if two years of research, it landed and took a sample in Oktober 2020 and it entered the Earth atmosphere and landed in Utah on 24 September 2023.

Here we can see a video from NASA after the landing with the first persons approaching and doing a visual inspection of the spacecraft and surrounding area. I expect (and hope) that it doesn't carry hazardous micro organisms.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1705968532041687369

A Channel Four item on it including an interview with an astrophysicist, one Dr Brian May who is rehearsing for an upcoming concert. He had a part in this mission.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

99942 Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 2004.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068.

Luckily for us, the risk seems to be not that bad. Over time radar observations have showed that for the next 100 years, it is almost certain that the asteroid will not hit Earth.

To learn more about asteroids and the birth of our Solar System, ESA plans to launch the Ramses (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) in April 2028, in order to let it have a rendezvous with 99942 Apophis in February 2029.

Ramses won't be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won't arrive at the asteroid until 23 April 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth.

Asteroid Apophis will visit Earth in 2029, and this European satellite will be along for the ride

By characterizing Apophis and how it reacts to being in Earth's gravitational field, Ramses will boost our knowledge of NEOs and planetary defense.

www.space.com

Introducing Ramses, ESA’s mission to asteroid Apophis

30 years ago, on 16 July 1994, astronomers watched in awe as the first of many pieces of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet slammed into Jupiter with incredible force. The event sparked intense interest in the field of planetary defence as people asked: “Could we do anything to prevent this happening to...

www.esa.int

 

[kato]

To learn more about asteroids and the birth of our Solar System, ESA plans to launch the Ramses (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) in April 2028, in order to let it have a rendezvous with 99942 Apophis in February 2029.

ESA is pitching the mission as part of its Planetary Defence Office btw.

The other space mission of that department, HERA, was originally planned to co-observe Didymos for the DART impact. It missed the launch date though and is now being prepped for a launch in October and a rendezvous in 2026. Based on that i wouldn't count on RAMSES arriving in time. ;-)