NASA is preparing, for the first time, to send a spacecraft to obtain and bring back material from an asteroid.
The agency announced Wednesday that the mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, will launch in 2016.
"This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said in a statement. "It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations."
OSIRIS-Rex will travel to within three miles of an asteroid known as 1999-RQ36. Arriving in 2020, the spacecraft will first map the asteroid’s surface and then collect at least two kilograms of regolith from it.
The sample will be returned to Earth in a capsule, which is to land at a test facility in Utah in 2023. From there, the sample will be transported to the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where it will be kept and tested in a laboratory operating under safety protocols aimed at protecting the planet from dangerous extraterrestrial contamination.
The sample will then be divided, with portions sent to laboratories around the nation for analysis that cannot be conducted by space-based instrumentation.
Researchers believe that the OSIRIS-Rex mission will provide significant insights into the origins of the solar system.
1999-RQ 36, like all asteroids, was formed from a cloud of dust and gas that resulted from the solar nebula. Therefore it is likely to contain clues about the formation of the Sun and the celestial objects that orbit it.
Little changed since its formation, the asteroid is also likely to contain carbon. Samples of material from meteorites and comets have included that element and so 1999-RQ36 may also provide insights into the origins of life on Earth.
"It will return samples of pristine organic material that scientists think might have seeded the sterile early Earth with the building blocks that led to life," Dr. Michael Drake, director of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and lead researcher for the mission, said. "Such samples do not currently exist on Earth."
A third benefit of the mission will be to assist scientists in understanding the ways in which asteroids move in space. By measuring the Yarkovsky effect on 1999-RQ36, scientists may be able to develop more effective methods of predicting the path of asteroids and other objects in space.
In the case of 1999-RQ36, such information would be useful in light of the possibility that the asteroid is on a path leading toward Earth. Scientists think there is a very small chance - about 1 in 1,800 - that it could collide with Earth in the year 2182.
The Yarkovsky effect is the impact of the Sun’s energy on an asteroid. As solar energy is absorbed by the rocky surface of the object, the object generates heat and, in turn, the object is propelled in space and its orbit is affected.
OSIRIS-Rex will cost about $800 million. The spacecraft will be built by Littleton-based Lockheed-Martin Space Systems Company.
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder will participate in the scientific team. Led by aerospace engineering professor Daniel J. Scheeres, they will study 1999-RQ36’s mass and gravity field in an attempt to understand the asteroid’s internal structure.
"We essentially will be weighing the asteroid to see how the mass is distributed across it," Scheeres said. "We need to know the mass and gravity field of the asteroid before the spacecraft comes in contact with it."
OSIRIS-Rex will be NASA’s third New Horizons mission. The first was launched on a mission to study the Pluto-Charon system and the Kuiper Belt in 2006, while the second – Juno – will be launched in August on a quest to study Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior.
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