The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swung past Earth Sunday, seven years after it was launched into orbit, to deliver a pristine sample retrieved from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
It's the first time NASA has returned an asteroid sample from space.
NASA is livestreaming the delivery and recovery activities.
Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) launched in 2016 and began circling Bennu in 2018.
The sample was obtained by the spacecraft in 2020, and it will return to Earth in May 2021.
The spaceship released the sample capsule, which was believed to contain 8.
8 ounces of asteroid rocks and dirt — from 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface early Sunday, entering the planet's atmosphere around 10:42 a.m.
ET at a speed of approximately 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometers per hour).
Parachutes were deployed to decelerate the capsule to a soft landing at 11 miles per hour (17 kilometers per hour) a speed of 7 km/h).
About 10 minutes after hitting the atmosphere, the sample landed on the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range.
OSIRIS-REx is continuing its journey of the solar system, with the spacecraft now on its way to take a close look at another asteroid dubbed Apophis.
What occurs after landing?
According to Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, four helicopters took recovery and research teams to the landing location and conducted evaluations to ensure the spacecraft was not damaged in any way. The capsule was not breached upon landing, according to the crew.
Recovery teams, which have been preparing for months, are ready to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so, according to Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which collaborated with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations, and assist in capsule recovery.
The initial recovery crew, using protective gloves and masks, confirmed that the capsule was cold enough to touch after reaching temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) during reentry, according to Burns. The scientists also made certain that the capsule's batteries did not break and spill any harmful gasses.
Air, dust, and soil particles were gathered by a research team from the landing site.
"One of the key scientific objectives of OSIRIS-REx is to return a pristine sample, and pristine means that no foreign materials impede our investigation during sample analysis," stated Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principle investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "As unlikely as it is, we do want to make sure that any materials out there in the Utah range that may interact with the sample are well documented."
The sample will be transported in a cargo net by helicopter to a temporary clean room near the landing location. Within this area, the curation team will perform a nitrogen flow, known as a purge, to prevent any of Earth's atmosphere from entering and contaminating the sample canister. According to Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the largest portions of the spacecraft will be pulled away.
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