University of Arizona, Tucson

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Goes for Early Stow of Asteroid Sample

Posted on Updated on

Grey Hautaluoma / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington

Nancy Neal Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Erin Morton
University of Arizona, Tucson

This illustration shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stowing the sample it collected from asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20, 2020. The spacecraft will use its Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm to place the TAGSAM collector head into the Sample Return Capsule (SRC).
Credits: NASA/University of Arizona, Tucson

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is ready to perform an early stow on Tuesday, Oct. 27, of the large sample it collected last week from the surface of the asteroid Bennu to protect and return as much of the sample as possible.

On Oct. 22, the OSIRIS-REx mission team received images that showed the spacecraft’s collector head overflowing with material collected from Bennu’s surface – well over the two-ounce (60-gram) mission requirement – and that some of these particles appeared to be slowly escaping from the collection head, called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM).

Read the rest of this entry »

This entry was posted in Asteroid Orbit Near Earth, Bennu, NASA, NASA/JPL, News, Organizations - Universities, OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft, Planetary and Asteroid Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson and tagged , , , , , , , , , .