Yesterday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft passed by the asteroid Bennu for the last time, ending his two-and-a-half-year relationship with space rock. But OSIRIS-REx still remains in the vicinity of the asteroid, as if reluctant to launch on its return of about 200 million miles to Earth. This trip will start in early May.
OSIRIS-REx is carrying precious samples from the asteroid and is expected to return to Earth on September 24, 2023.
“Leaving Bennu’s neighborhood in May puts us in the ‘sweet spot’ when the departure maneuver consumes the least amount of fuel aboard the spacecraft,” said Michael Moreau, deputy project manager for the OSIRIS-REx mission. at Goddard Space Flight of NASA Center in a statement. Moreau added that it is the largest propulsion maneuver that the spacecraft has undertaken since it first approached Bennu in October 2018.
As OSIRIS-REx left its familiar orbit, it captured images of the asteroid’s surface from about 3 miles away. NASA researchers hope that they will show how Bennu’s surface changed after collecting OSIRIS-REx samples, which required the spacecraft’s explosion material from the rock’s surface.
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Touch and Go (TAG) sample collection on October 20, 2020 was a success, but the team added the flight to the departure schedule to take a look at how it could have changed the asteroid’s surface. The struggle lasted almost six hours, covering more than one complete rotation of the asteroid.
“By analyzing the distribution of excavated material around the TAG site, we will learn more about the nature of the surface and underground materials, along with the asteroid’s mechanical properties,” said Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and principal investigator for OSIRIS- REx, in a NASA Press release.
We will stay in line with the latest images, which should appear in about a week. The spacecraft shares antennas for communications on Earth with the Perseverance rover, which is also busy sending messages back at this time. So it may take some time.
It is about a month before OSIRIS-REx begins its return journey. We hope that these latest asteroid images will be enough to keep us intrigued until September 2023.