2023-09-24 NASA
The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Credits: NASA/Keegan Barber
◆このプロジェクトは、太陽系の形成、有機物と水の起源、地球上の生命についての理解を深め、危険な小惑星についての知識を広げるために役立ちます。 OSIRIS-RExプロジェクトは、2016年からの長い旅路を経て、小惑星ベンヌからの試料を成功裏に地球に送り返しました。これは科学の大きな成果であり、今後の分析によって新たな知識が得られる可能性があります。
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-first-asteroid-sample-has-landed-now-secure-in-clean-room/
- https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex
OSIRIS-REx：起源、スペクトル解釈、資源探査、安全保障 – レゴリス探査機OSIRIS-REx：Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer
OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. It returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, to drop off material from asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft didn’t land, but continued on to a new mission to explore asteroid Apophis. Meanwhile, scientists hope the pristine samples it dropped into the Utah desert offer clues to whether asteroids colliding with Earth billions of years ago brought water and other key ingredients for life.
Overview
Launched on Sept. 8, 2016, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft traveled to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36) and collected a sample of rocks and dust from the surface.
The spacecraft delivered the sample to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. It released the capsule holding pieces of Bennu over Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule parachuted to the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range, where the OSIRIS-REx team was waiting to retrieve it.
This mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC.
