On Sunday morning, a capsule the scale of a mini-fridge dropped from the skies over western Utah, carrying a first-of-its-kind package deal: about 250 grams of filth and dirt plucked from the floor of an asteroid. As a candy-striped parachute billowed open to gradual its freefall, the capsule plummeted right down to the sand, barely forward of schedule.
The particular supply got here courtesy of OSIRIS-REx, the primary NASA mission to journey to an asteroid and return a pattern of its contents to Earth. Launched in 2016, the mission’s goal was Bennu, a “near-Earth” asteroid that’s thought to have shaped through the photo voltaic system’s first 10 million years. The asteroid is made principally of carbon and minerals, and has not been altered a lot because it shaped. Samples from its floor might subsequently provide priceless clues in regards to the sorts of minerals and supplies that first got here collectively to form the early photo voltaic system.
OSIRIS-REx journeyed for over two years to succeed in Bennu, the place it then spent one other two years circling and measuring its floor, on the lookout for a spot to select a pattern. Among the many suite of devices aboard the spacecraft was an MIT-student-designed experiment, REXIS (the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer). The shoebox-sized instrument was the work of greater than 100 MIT college students, who designed the instrument to map the asteroid’s floor materials in X-rays, to assist decide the place the spacecraft ought to take a pattern. REXIS is a joint venture between the MIT Division of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), MIT Division of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), the Harvard School Observatory, the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and House Analysis, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
On Sunday, OSIRIS-REx launched the capsule to fall by the Earth’s ambiance, because the spacecraft itself set off on a brand new course to the asteroid Apophis. The capsule has been transported to Houston’s Johnson House Heart, the place Bennu’s mud can be examined and distributed to researchers all over the world for additional examine. The pattern’s profitable return is a big milestone for the mission’s members, together with MIT’s Richard Binzel, a number one professional within the examine of asteroids, and a professor post-tenure in EAPS and AeroAstro. As an OSIRIS-REx co-investigator, Binzel helped lead the event of REXIS and its integration with the spacecraft. MIT Information checked in with Binzel for his first reactions following the capsule’s touchdown and restoration, and what he hopes we would be taught from the asteroid’s mud.
Q: First off: What a touchdown! As somebody who’s studied asteroids in depth, and from afar, what was it like so that you can see a pattern of this asteroid, returned to Earth?
A: I used to be holding my breath similar to everybody else! The parachute opening was an enormous exhale, and the smooth touchdown was a launch of pleasure on behalf of your complete workforce. You’re employed with these individuals for thus lengthy, you turn out to be like household, so you’re feeling every little thing collectively. Type of like watching your child ending off their steadiness beam routine and sticking the touchdown. Whereas I wasn’t on the touchdown website, many people had been “collectively” on-line watching the timeline and all of the procedures. What a journey it has been, greater than twenty years within the making, beginning with our telescopic identification of Bennu as a scientifically wealthy and simply accessible sampling goal, after which with the various evolving designs of the mission. MIT scholar involvement with the REXIS instrument started in 2010. It took six years to succeed in the launch pad and now, lastly, we’re seeing the mission actually come full circle in returning the pattern to the Earth.
Q: The devices aboard OSIRIS-REx made measurements of the asteroid whereas in orbit. What did these measurements in area reveal in regards to the asteroid? And what extra do you hope scientists can uncover, now {that a} pattern is again on Earth?
A: Spacecraft devices, irrespective of technologically superior, can not accomplish practically as a lot as the facility of laboratories on Earth. Our devices aboard OSIRIS-REx informed us that Bennu is carbon-rich, probably containing among the earliest chemical information of the components that made the Earth and even life itself. However how do we all know that the spacecraft devices making measurements whereas flying above the floor are totally appropriate in what they reveal and the way we interpret the info? We will solely ensure by securing the “floor fact” offered by precise samples being introduced into Earth’s laboratories. The laboratory evaluation of those samples, confirming our preliminary findings, will confirm our potential to interpret information about asteroids from each telescopes and orbiting spacecraft. Then the laboratory evaluation will take us to even better depths in regards to the chemistry, situations, and processes for a way our personal planetary system got here to be.
Q: Let’s give a shoutout to all the scholars who helped to place an instrument aboard the mission. Going ahead, how would possibly this asteroid pattern — and the spacecraft’s continued trajectory — relate to the work at MIT?
A: It’s a reminder that the sky is not any restrict for what we do at MIT. MIT’s REXIS instrument represents MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” [“mind and hand”], prolonged lots of of thousands and thousands of miles out in to area, with precise {hardware} the scholars each designed and constructed, that was flown farther into area than every other MIT scholar venture has gone earlier than. I really feel it’s merely a privilege to have engaged so many college students in studying and experiencing the depth of onerous work, teamwork, and dedication that it takes to achieve success in area exploration.
