Asteroid samples successfully sealed in capsule to return to Earth, NASA says:
An estimated two pounds or more of rock and soil collected from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have been successfully sealed up in a protective re-entry capsule for return to Earth in 2023, project managers said Thursday.
While detailed hands-on analysis cannot begin until the samples are returned, scientists have already gained insights into the flaky nature of Bennu's soil, or regolith, by watching how it behaved when the rocks and soil were collected on October 20.
And that is already feeding into discussions about how to possibly one day divert a threatening asteroid from a collision with Earth.
[...] Because mission managers decided not to attempt weighing the collected samples, they do not know for sure how much material was captured. But based on the amount visible to OSIRIS-REx's cameras, Lauretta said he is confident at last two pounds or[sic] rock and soil were scooped up as the TAGSAM pressed into and blow[sic] Bennu's surface.
"There was very little resistance to the spacecraft's downward motion from the asteroid regolith," he said. "And so we were continuing to penetrate and burrow underneath the subsurface of the asteroid while the TAGSAM gas was being injected into the regolith.
"Current assessments are that we penetrated a minimum of 24 centimeters (9.4 inches) ... and possibly as deep as over 48 centimeters (18.9 inches) with TAGSAM gas firing and collecting and driving material into the collection chamber during that entire time. So we are highly confident ... the TAGSAM was was[sic] full to capacity."
Even though a few "tens of grams" of material managed to float free of the sample collector before it could be stowed, Lauretta said he believes "we still have hundreds of grams of material in the sample collector head, probably over a kilogram easily."
"But of course, we have to wait till 2023 to open up the TAGSAM and be sure."
Also at Engadget (Thanks Runaway1956!)
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NASA reports, via NASA, that OSIRIS-REx is leaving Bennu.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx completed its last flyover of Bennu around 6 a.m. EDT (4 a.m. MDT) April 7 and is now slowly drifting away from the asteroid; however, the mission team will have to wait a few more days to find out how the spacecraft changed the surface of Bennu when it grabbed a sample of the asteroid.
The OSIRIS-REx team added this flyby to document surface changes resulting from the Touch and Go (TAG) sample collection maneuver Oct. 20, 2020. "By surveying the distribution of the excavated material around the TAG site, we will learn more about the nature of the surface and subsurface materials along with the mechanical properties of the asteroid," said Dr. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona.
During the flyby, OSIRIS-REx imaged Bennu for 5.9 hours, covering more than a full rotation of the asteroid. It flew within 2.1 miles' (3.5 kilometers) distance to the surface of Bennu – the closest it's been since the TAG sample collection event.
Just to mention, the survey and selection of a sampling site was one of the recent "citizen science" projects.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 02 2020, @10:32AM (4 children)
I wonder if they can make a measurement of how much mass has been acquired by measuring the velocity change during a rocket burn?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2020, @01:43PM (3 children)
The craft weighs about 1,000 kg:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx [wikipedia.org]
Can you detect a difference of 0.1% in total mass?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 02 2020, @03:04PM
I don't know, that sounds like a big difference to me but I am not a rocket scientist.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 02 2020, @03:14PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 02 2020, @07:49PM
Unless there is systematic error e.g. every time you pump fuel into the rocket engine you lose a bit to evaporation; or every time you make a rocket burst you have to spend a bit of energy to heat up the rocket nozzle.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday November 02 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)
As I say, it's not a criticism, as knowing that there's a technique that could word when we really want to know what something is (a rock from outside the solar system, say) is an engineering advance all on it's own. I'm just not sure we should get more excited by the grit than we are the method of acquiring the grit.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2020, @04:18PM
Even "non-results" can be interesting, although the current academic environment largely eschews publishing "I did this and nothing exciting happened"-type of papers and this is widely regarded as a problem.
Anyway I found this fact sheet [archive.org] which lists several high level science objectives of the mission: