Field Notes: Scanning the Utah desert sky for a historic delivery

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Field Notes is an occasional series in which faculty and staff members share experiences from their field research. In this Field Notes column, Daniel Stolte, science writer in University Communications, writes about a trip he took to Utah to cover the OSIRIS-REx mission's delivery of a sample from asteroid Bennu. 

On Sept. 24, the spacecraft of OSIRIS-REx, a mission led by the University of Arizona, jettisoned a capsule containing pristine material from asteroid Bennu and sent it toward Earth. A University Communications team – including the author, Daniel Stolte – was on location to help coordinate media activities and document the culmination of the seven-year space-faring portion of the mission.  

The morning is chilly and dark as we load camera gear and backpacks into our rental SUV in Tooele, Utah, about 30 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. With me are fellow science writer Mikayla Mace Kelley, video communications manager Arlene Islas and photographer Chris Richards. After driving for about an hour and climbing over a windy mountain pass, we roll down into the vast expanse before us that is the Utah Test and Training Range, with the Dugway Proving Ground, an area as big as Rhode Island and owned by the U.S. military, just beyond.  

As we pull up to the entrance gate, the Milky Way arches overhead, its constellations brimming in the black pre-dawn sky. The area's scarcity of artificial light affords a view into the universe that early human ancestors would have considered normal. When my watch shows 4:42 a.m., I look up, knowing full well that there is nothing for me to see. But I know that somewhere in that star-studded sky, something has happened that within a few hours would have this place swarming with reporters and guests.  

In this moment, 67,000 miles from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed a preprogrammed command that separated it from its sample return capsule, sending it spinning into the black void like a football thrown at 27,000 miles per hour.  

The sun is still below the horizon as we lead a small caravan of vehicles carrying reporters into the proving grounds. After a few miles, our convoy reaches a small airfield next to a concrete hangar and a tower that – judging by the swirl marks where hands have tried to wipe away the dust just enough to see out – doesn't appear to ​​have controlled much air traffic as of late. 

An old airplane hangar transformed into a TV studio

Inside the hangar, dozens of people, some in fatigues, are busily moving about, setting up cameras, lights and screens. Members of the 2nd Audiovisual Squadron – part of the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Agency – slip in and out of a semitruck outfitted to serve as a mobile broadcast center, while NASA broadcast professionals flock around a sleek white helicopter bearing NASA's iconic "meatball" logo, making final adjustments to a camera mounted on a swivel on one of the skids. A pop-up studio has been set up and two NASA commentators are getting ready for a live broadcast that will allow people around the globe to witness NASA's historic attempt at bringing back the largest sample of extraterrestrial material since the Apollo moon landings.  

Soon, the sun is peeking over the horizon, casting tinges of orange and violet across the plain in front of us, which is dotted with hills and rocky outcrops. The sky is blue and clear except for a lone white vapor trail streaming from a plane too high up to see clearly. All I can make out is a wingspan that is huge. Knowing that I'm inside the largest restricted air space in the U.S., the trail catches my attention. "That's our WB-57," I hear a NASA colleague say, pointing at a flat-screen displaying shaky black-and-white video of cloud tops. The video is being filmed aboard that aircraft, the only one of its kind, used by NASA as a reconnaissance aircraft. I watch as the tiny white dot circles overhead, 15,000 feet above typical airline cruising altitude. Today, its mission is to spot the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule and follow its plunge through Earth's atmosphere and help the ground recovery team locate it after it lands.    

At 8:42 a.m., exactly four hours after it separated from the spacecraft, the capsule hits the top of the atmosphere. Many of us had wondered whether it would be possible to see the fiery trail as the capsule streaked across the sky, coming in over San Francisco, racing across Nevada and homing in on the "landing ellipse" – an area 8 miles wide and 19 miles long that was designated as the target area for the capsule's landing. Experts agreed that it would be extremely unlikely anything would be visible from the ground, but now that I know the capsule is hurtling toward us, I can't help but squint into the sky. But there's nothing. Just blue sky.  

Several flat-screens set up in the media tent display the video feed of the NASA live broadcast, as commentators narrate the events unfolding above our heads. During an earlier conversation with Dante Lauretta, a Regents Professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who leads this mission, he had said that he didn't anticipate getting much, if any, sleep the night before the landing. To him, the only thing that mattered this morning was "seeing that parachute come out" to slow the capsule's descent.  

And then, there it is: On the screen, an airborne camera pans across the familiar view of the tan desert terrain dotted with sage green brush when, suddenly, an orb suspended beneath red and white stripes drifts across the scenery. The camera locks on to the parachute while the tent erupts into cheers. Again, I catch myself dashing outside to peer into the sky. Nothing. Still too far away. Here at the Michael Army Airfield at the Dugway Proving Ground, we are about 10 miles away from the edge of the ellipse.  

Touchdown in the Utah desert

At 8:52 a.m., the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule touches down, three minutes ahead of schedule. The mission recovery team had practiced for a variety of scenarios, including a rough-and-tumble landing or one in which the preprogrammed cutting of the parachute lines would not occur and wind would drag the capsule across the ground. None of that happened. The sample return capsule, or SRC, nailed a picture-perfect landing, softly ​​touching down in sand still wet from rain earlier in the week. Now it sat there, charred from its hellish ride through Earth's atmosphere, waiting for the recovery specialists to pick it up.  

At the mission operations center, I see Lauretta exchange final instructions with his team members and then put on copious amounts of sunscreen and a wide-brimmed hat along with a hydration pack and a bucket with tools. His team's job this morning was to document the environment at the landing site by taking samples of the soil, the air and any water that might be present. One of the things that makes the OSIRIS-REx mission so special is that it was designed from the very beginning to not only ensure the sample would remain pristine, or free from any contamination, but also to create a complete and gapless record of where the sample had been and what it encountered along its journey from the surface of Bennu to the clean room at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston.  

Minutes later, the smell of jet fuel wafts through the air as four helicopters spool up their engines and Lauretta and the other members of the sample recovery team file out across the tarmac. One by one, the helicopters lift off, form a convoy, and whir out into the desert toward the landing ellipse. Those of us not fortunate enough to hitch a ride on one of those helicopters turn once again to the video feed on the screen. Over the next hour and a half, we watch as specialists approach the capsule and perform various tasks to make sure the area is safe. Once everything looks good, Lauretta's team scours the SRC's surroundings, marking the ground with little red flags, collecting samples of the soil and the air, and taking notes. Eventually, the SRC is carefully wrapped in several layers of Teflon blankets before two team members lift it onto a custom-made crate and attach it to a 100-foot line connected to the belly of one of the helicopters.  

Into the clean room

Finally, faint rotor noise is heard again, and people flock outside, squinting toward to the horizon. A tiny black dot materializes, slowly moving against the hillsides in the background. As it comes closer, I can make out an even smaller dot underneath it: the capsule. Flying slowly to reduce drag on the line and its cargo, the helicopter approaches a warehouse across the tarmac, where technicians and scientists have spent the last few weeks setting up a temporary clean room. Everything is ready.  

Outside the hangar, a team awaits the historic delivery. Carefully, the helicopter hovers lower and lower until the cargo net touches the ground. The team lifts the SRC onto the cart and wheels it into the hangar. After a quick safety assessment and exterior cleaning, team members take the capsule into the clean room, where they will spend the next few hours carefully separating the heat shield from the back shell, exposing the sample canister and hooking it up to a continuous flow of nitrogen gas to ensure the material inside is protected from exposure to air or any contaminants. Tomorrow, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane will take the sample canister to Johnson Space Center in Houston to be transferred into a permanent clean room, its home for the coming weeks and months.  

With the nail-biting moments of bringing the largest amount of extraterrestrial material since the Apollo moon landings to Earth behind me, I get ready to fly back to Tucson, knowing that the real adventure has just begun: unraveling the mysteries locked in a small pile of black dust and pebbles from 4 1/2 billion years ago, when Earth was just about to form. 

As a science writer in the Office of University Communications, Daniel Stolte has covered the OSIRIS-REx mission since it was launched in 2016. Having just returned from Johnson Space Center, where the sample was revealed on Oct. 11, he is excited about the discoveries awaiting once material from asteroid Bennu arrives at the University to be studied in detail.  

If you have an idea for a Field Notes column, send an email to Andy Ober at andyober@arizona.edu.