NASA begins opening up OSIRIS-REx samples at Johnson Space Center

NASA receives its first asteroid samples

Sunday morning the sample return capsule of OSIRIS-REx touched down in a desert in Utah. Inside it is expected to be a plethora of regolith from the target it collected from three years ago. This is the first set of asteroid samples NASA has collected. The mission is a partnership between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight and the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, who provided the principal science team, while the spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin.

In a post landing press conference, NASA confirmed that the samples appear to be in a good state even after the main parachutes opened much higher in the atmosphere than planned. The samples where helicoptered over to a temporary clean room at the military’s Utah Testing and Training Range before it was loaded onto a C-17 and flown to Houston.

At Johnson Space Center, NASA has constructed a new facility to house the samples of asteroid Bennu. There a team of scientist and technicians will open and begin the long cataloging process. Similar to the facility for Apollo samples, the facility is equipped with glove boxes inside clean rooms to ensure no samples get contaminated by Earth’s atmosphere.

OSIRIS-REx team members uncovering Bennu samples. Image: NASA

Once NASA and JAXA, who has partnered with the US on the mission, know just how much material they have, they can begin to distribute samples to universities across the world. While most of the institutes will be in the United States and Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and India are also on the list for samples to study.

Join our Discord Server: Join the community with forums and chatrooms about space!

Pending politics could bring sample work to a halt

Just in time to ruin our excitement over OSRIS-REx, Congress has continued to fight over the government’s budget. While we still have days, which in congress crunch time is a lot, before a shutdown is guaranteed, its potential could affect the sample’s getting in to the hands of scientists.

“Certain steps leading to its highly anticipated analysis will possibly be delayed,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division said, “but the sample will remain protected and safe on despite any unforeseen disruptions to the schedule.”

If congress can pass a continuing resolution, which would keep the government operating at 2023 levels, sample studying would go unaffected at least for a short period. However, a small number of Representatives are fighting for no continuing resolutions while the remainder are open to it.

The Senate is ready to vote on enacting one Thursday night. However, only time will tell if the House will allow it to go to a vote as the speakership of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy relies on keeping those anti-stopgap members happy.

Right now Congress has until Saturday at midnight to reach an agreement to either fund the Government for another year or pass a continuing resolution. While most shutdowns don’t last long, anything is possible in politics.