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NASA Probe Osiris-Rex ‘Boops’ Asteroid Bennu in Historic Mission

After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex briefly touched down asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday to gather rock and dust samples in a precision operation 200 million miles (330 million kilometers) from Earth.

The so-called "Touch-And-Go" or TAG maneuver was handled by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, Colorado, where at 6:12 p.m. (2212 GMT) the announcer said: "Touchdown has been announced. Sampling is in advance, "and scientists have exploded in celebration, reports AFP.

The historic mission was 12 years in the making and rested on a crucial 16 second period in which the spacecraft carried out a delicate autonomous maneuver to catch its precious payload: at least 60 grams (two ounces) or a candy bar of regolith that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system.

If Osiris-Rex successfully comes home in September 2023, it will have collected the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

“We think we actually might be coming back with a baby picture of what the solar system was like, of what our chemistry was like, billions of years ago,” NASA scientist Michelle Thaller said.

“We’re looking for our own origins out there, and that’s why we’ve gone so far to bring a bit of Bennu back.”

The spacecraft, around the size of a large bus, slowed down to a crawl of just 10 centimeters (four inches) per second in the final step of its descent into the Nightingale crater on the asteroid's north pole, which is 490 meters (1,600 feet ) in diameter.

For scale comparison, that's only a little smaller than the Empire State building.

Osiris-Rex lowered its robotic arm to the target zone by just eight meters (26 feet ) in diameter, then shot pressurized nitrogen to agitate the surface material and take its sample.

Then the spacecraft shot its propellers back from the surface of Bennu to complete what scientists playfully characterized as a "boop."

Mission control and the public heard about all this about 18.5 minutes later than it actually occurred because of the time it takes for the signals to return from space rock, which mainly orbits between Venus and Mars.

The first photos will only be available on Wednesday until the probe is further away and the data transmission rate is higher.

We will have to wait until Saturday to find out if Osiris-Rex has succeeded in collecting the desired amount of dust.

Scientists want at least 60 grams but the spacecraft is capable of picking up as much as two kilograms, or five pounds.

If it turns out the spacecraft didn’t collect enough, it will have another go on January 12, 2021, at a backup site which is another relatively boulder-free area near the rock’s equator. – ‘Rosetta stone’ –

Scientists are interested in analyzing the composition of the asteroids in the solar system because they are made of the same materials that formed the planets.

It’s “almost a Rosetta stone, something that’s out there and tells the history of our entire Earth, of the solar system during the last billions of years,” said NASA’s chief scientist, Thomas Zurbuchen.

Laboratories on Earth will be able to carry out much more high powered analysis of their physical and chemical characteristics, said NASA’s planetary science division director Lori Glaze.

Not all samples will be analyzed immediately, like those brought back from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, which NASA is still opening up 50 years later.

NASA chose this particular asteroid because it is conveniently close and also ancient: scientists calculated that it formed in the first 10 million years of our solar system’s history, 4.5 billion years ago.

After Osiris-Rex reached the rock at the end of 2018, the project’s team was surprised to receive photographs showing that it was covered with pebbles and boulders sometimes 30 meters high.

Last year, Japan became the first nation to touch an asteroid after its Hayabusa2 probe collected some dust from Ryugu, and is now on its way home.

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