rooster59 Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 NASA probe leaking asteroid samples after hearty collection By Joey Roulette This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, composed of 12 PolyCam images collected on December 2, 2018 by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles (24 km). NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) - The U.S. probe that collected a sample from an asteroid earlier this week retrieved so much material that a rock is wedged in the container door, allowing rocks to spill back out into space, NASA officials said on Friday. The robotic arm of the probe, OSIRIS-REx, on Tuesday night kicked up a debris cloud of rocks on Bennu, a skyscraper-sized asteroid some 200 million miles (320 million km) from Earth and trapped the material in a collection device for the return to Earth. But images of the spacecraft's collection head beamed back to ground control revealed it had caught more material than scientists anticipated and was spewing an excess of flaky asteroid rocks into space. The leakage had the OSIRIS-REx mission team scrambling to stow the collection device to prevent additional spillage."Time is of the essence," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, told reporters. Zurbuchen said mission teams will skip their chance to measure how much material they collected as originally planned and proceed to the stow phase, a fragile process of tucking the sample collection container in a safe position within the spacecraft without jostling out more valuable material.NASA will not know how much material it collected until the sample capsule returns in 2023. The troubleshooting also led mission leaders to forgo any more chances of redoing a collection attempt and instead commit to begin the spacecraft’s return to Earth next March. "Quite honestly, we could not have performed a better collection experiment," OSIRIS-REx principle investigator Dante Lauretta told reporters, affirming a hearty sample size. But with the door lodged open by a rock and the "concerning" images of sample spillage, "we're almost the victim of our own success here," he added. The roughly $800 million, minivan-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, launched in 2016 to grab and return the first U.S. sample of pristine asteroid materials. Japan is the only other country to have accomplished such a feat.Asteroids are among the leftover debris from the solar system’s formation some 4.5 billion years ago. A sample could hold clues to the origins of life on Earth, scientists say. (Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and William Mallard) -- © Copyright Reuters 2020-10-24 - Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you - Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post MaxYakov Posted October 24, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted October 24, 2020 I hate it when that happens! 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Enoon Posted October 24, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted October 24, 2020 "A sample could hold clues to the origins of life on Earth, scientists say" "The Andromeda Strain": 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tug Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 Hope they get a lid on it!pretty cool stuff 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
overherebc Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 10 hours ago, Tug said: Hope they get a lid on it!pretty cool stuff Is it too much to say that 800 million could be better spent back here? More important to invest in where we are heading, not where we 'might' have come from. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emdog Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 "Honey, I'm gonna pull over and check the trunk. Seems I didn't shut it all the way" I do wonder how bits of sample could fly out of container (...spewing an excess of flaky asteroid rocks into space). Must be the wind.... ???????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKDfella Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Well, we could wait a 100 years or so. In the past Bennu had a 1 in 24,000 chance of hitting Earth and now for the year 2160 (or there about) it has 1 in 2,700. So if the chances keep rising like that we'll have a 500 wide meter sample 'right in our own back yard'. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThaiFelix Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Still searching for the elusive Kryptonite! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ireland32 Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 6 hours ago, overherebc said: Is it too much to say that 800 million could be better spent back here? More important to invest in where we are heading, not where we 'might' have come from. Let’s find out what bountiful metals that can help mankind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connda Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 23 hours ago, rooster59 said: The U.S. probe that collected a sample from an asteroid earlier this week retrieved so much material that a rock is wedged in the container door, allowing rocks to spill back out into space, NASA officials said on Friday. And there is the classic cause and effect of greed. "Pack it full, pack if full!!!" With a compromised bay it will probably burn up on reentry if it even makes it back. "But we packed if full!!!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargeezr Posted October 26, 2020 Share Posted October 26, 2020 We could keep spending money on space projects, or spend it in the black hole of Earth, and all its causes. I would rather see it being spent all over. Geezer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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