{"id":14326,"date":"2017-09-22T23:19:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T15:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/osiris-rex-asteroid-mission-receives-gravitational-boost-from-planet-earth\/"},"modified":"2017-09-22T23:19:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T15:19:09","slug":"osiris-rex-asteroid-mission-receives-gravitational-boost-from-planet-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/osiris-rex-asteroid-mission-receives-gravitational-boost-from-planet-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission receives gravitational boost from planet Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: <\/strong><\/em>Updated at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) after flyby.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flying by Earth. Credit: NASA\/Goddard Space Flight Center\/University of Arizona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, en route to asteroid Bennu to retrieve samples and return them to scientists, slingshot past Earth on Friday, using gravity to change its trajectory for a rendezvous with its target late next year.<\/p>\n

One year since it launched from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas 5 rocket, OSIRIS-REx returned to Earth on Friday with a high-speed encounter that too the probe about 10,771 miles (17,237 kilometers) over the planet. The solar-powered spacecraft will make its closest approach to Earth at 1652 GMT (12:52 p.m. EDT) Friday, passing over Antarctica, just south of Cape Horn, Chile.<\/p>\n

Navigators confirmed OSIRIS-REx\u2019s trajectory would not go near any satellites or space junk tracked in Earth orbit, officials said.<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx approached Earth at a relative velocity of 19,000 mph \u2014 more than 30,000 kilometers per hour \u2014 after traveling almost 600 million miles (1 billion kilometers) since its blastoff Sept. 8, 2016. The spacecraft spent the last year orbiting the sun, fine-tuning its flight path with several engine and thruster firings to aim for Friday\u2019s Earth flyby.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft got a gravitational kick from the encounter, employing Earth\u2019s gravity to redirect its orbit toward asteroid Bennu, an object measuring around 1,600 feet (500 meters) in diameter. Bennu circles the sun on a course tilted roughly 6 degrees from the plane of Earth\u2019s orbit, requiring OSIRIS-REx to fight against the sun\u2019s gravitational pull to reach the asteroid.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s flyby imparted a change in OSIRIS-REx\u2019s velocity of around 8,451 mph \u2014 nearly 3.8 kilometers per second \u2014 around twice the adjustment possible if the spacecraft dedicated all of its fuel to the maneuver.<\/p>\n

Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, OSIRIS-REx would have needed a much bigger, and more expensive, launcher to fly directly from Earth to Bennu, or carry a heavier load of fuel, a design change that would also have necessitated a larger rocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a way to substantially save on resources, either on the spacecraft or on the launch vehicle, or both,\u201d said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx\u2019s principal investigator from the University of Arizona.<\/p>\n

The gravity assist was similar to maneuvers used on many interplanetary missions, and the slingshot effect is natural, requiring no input from the spacecraft once it\u2019s on course for the flyby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe encounter with Earth is fundamental to our rendezvous with Bennu,\u201d said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cThe total velocity change from Earth\u2019s gravity far exceeds the total fuel load of the OSIRIS-REx propulsion system, so we are really leveraging our Earth flyby to make a massive change to the OSIRIS-REx trajectory, specifically changing the tilt of the orbit to match Bennu.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA expected to regain communications with OSIRIS-REx around 1740 GMT (1:40 p.m. EDT), and the spacecraft was to begin collecting imagery and calibration data with its science instruments around four hours after closest approach at a distance of approximately 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth.<\/p>\n

The space agency announced Friday afternoon that spacecraft executed the gravity assist maneuver as planned.<\/p>\n

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OSIRIS-REx will approach Earth over the night side of the planet, then swing over the South Pole and depart over the Pacific Ocean in daylight. Credit: NASA\/Goddard Space Flight Center\/University of Arizona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx\u2019s three imaging cameras will look back at Earth and the moon for up to 10 days after the encounter, capturing close-up and long-range views, including a family portrait of the Earth-moon system.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft closed in on Earth above the night side of the planet, meaning the best views will come on OSIRIS-REx\u2019s outbound leg as it departs over the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx\u2019s thermal emission spectrometer and visible and infrared spectrometer will also collect data on Earth for calibration, ensuring the accuracy of measurements gathered at Bennu. The mission\u2019s Canadian-built laser altimeter and a student-built dust experiment will not be fully activated until arrival at Bennu.<\/p>\n

Images from the flyby will be released Tuesday, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spacecraft is doing extremely well,\u201d Lauretta said in an interview with Spaceflight Now before the flyby. \u201cWe have checked out all of the spacecraft subsystems, and everything is woking as expected. The instruments have gone through two checkout and calibration campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx is short for the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security \u2013 Regolith Explorer, an approximately $1 billion mission funded by NASA to travel to asteroid Bennu, snag at least 2.1 ounces \u2014 60 grams \u2014 of surface material, and return the specimens to Earth in September 2023.<\/p>\n

Next up for the mission will be a series of course correction burns over the next year to set up for the final approach to Bennu.<\/p>\n

Science observations of Bennu will begin in August 2018, and detailed images of Bennu should be acquired by OSIRIS-REx in October. Analysts will look for evidence of debris or moons in the asteroid\u2019s vicinity before OSIRIS-REx\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe encounter, as the flight dynamicists think about it, happens in November of 2018,\u201d Lauretta said. \u201cThat\u2019s when we\u2019ll actually do a close approach over the north pole of the asteroid with an imaging campaign, and then do a couple of maneuvers and repeat that sequence multiple times.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx will go into orbit around the asteroid and identify locations where the probe\u2019s sampling mechanism could scoop up material for return to Earth. The mission is the first asteroid sample return attempt mounted by NASA, and the second worldwide after Japan\u2019s Hayabusa mission brought back microscopic specimens from asteroid Itokawa in 2010.<\/p>\n

Some time in July 2020, a robotic arm will reach down to the asteroid\u2019s surface with a device that will unleash a pulse of compressed nitrogen gas, scouring up bits of dust and rock into a collection chamber.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft will leave Bennu in 2021 for the cruise back to Earth, where it will drop the sample-carrying canister for re-entry and a parachute-assisted landing in Utah on Sept. 24, 2023. Scientists will inspect and analyze the samples in a special clean room at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston, looking for signs of organic molecules and other primordial building blocks that formed the planets and seeded life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really giving us a taste of what we\u2019re going to experience next year, and I think it\u2019s the start of building the excitement for our asteroid encounter,\u201d Lauretta said of Friday\u2019s flyby of Earth.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: Updated at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) after flyby. Artist\u2019s concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flying by Earth. Credit: NASA\/Goddard Space Flight Center\/University of Arizona NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, en route to asteroid Bennu to retrieve samples and return them to scientists, slingshot past Earth on Friday, using gravity to change its trajectory for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1519,1526,1790,472,1527,1561,2741],"class_list":["post-14326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroids","tag-bennu","tag-goddard-space-flight-center","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-osiris-rex","tag-planetary-science","tag-university-of-arizona"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}