It took NASA three months to unlock the asteroid Bennu sample container.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Many might think that taking a spoonful of soil from an orbiting space rock and then sending it back to Earth would be the trickiest part of an asteroid sampling mission. But the real challenge is opening the sample container once you get home.
Reported Dedicate onself, On Monday (1/15/2024), it took more than three months, but NASA said it had finally managed to remove two fasteners that were preventing it from accessing most of the material collected from asteroid Bennu from its spacecraft OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx delivered its samples on September 24 before setting off to study another asteroid, Apophis.
Although NASA was initially able to collect several ounces of asteroid material found outside the Touch-and-Go-Sample (TAGSAM) sample acquisition mechanism, the contents inside remained stranded due to problems with two of the 35 fasteners that keep the housing closed. .
TAGSAM is housed in a special glovebox to avoid sample contamination and only certain instruments are approved for use with it. There was no tool that could remove stubborn fasteners from the TAGSAM’s head, so the team had to develop a new one.
“In addition to the design challenges of being limited to approved materials for protecting the scientific value of asteroid samples, these new instruments must also operate within a very limited space in the glove compartment, thus limiting the height, weight and potential of arc motion,” said Dr. Nicole Lunning, curator of OSIRIS-REx.
Now that TAGSAM’s head has been freed, the team can continue dismantling the container. That means we’ll soon be able to see what’s inside. NASA’s initial assessment of dust and rock from beyond TAGSAM found evidence of carbon and water.
2024-01-16 07:17:15
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