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A Race Against Time: NASA Readies for Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery - SciTechDaily

A Race Against Time: NASA Readies for Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery - SciTechDaily

A Race Against Time: NASA Readies for Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery - SciTechDaily
Mar 26, 2023 1 min, 11 secs

“Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room,” said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

So, over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

But to understand whether asteroids played a role in delivering these compounds to Earth’s surface over 4 billion years ago, scientists need a pristine sample from space, free from terrestrial contaminants.

Recovery crews are responsible for securing the sample return capsule’s landing site and helicoptering it to a portable clean room located at the range.

Once the capsule is inside the building with the portable clean room, members of the team will remove the heat shield, back shell, and other components to prepare the sample canister for transport to Houston.

The return to Earth of samples from asteroid Bennu will be the culmination of a more than 12-year effort by NASA and its mission partners but marks the beginning of a new phase of discovery as scientists from around the world will turn their attention to the analysis of this unique and precious material dating from the early formation of our solar system.

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