OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta examines a replica of the sample capsule, consisting of the heatshield (white) and the back shell (tan), following a successful drop test. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
Members of the press overlook the "landing ellipse" – the designated landing area for the OSIRIS-REx sample capsule – on the Utah Test and Training Range. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
As soon as the capsule has arrived via helicopter, it will be taken into a temporary cleanroom inside a hangar on Michael Army Airfield on the Dugway Proving Ground, where team members will separate the sample canister from inside the capsule's heat shield and back shell. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta in front of a hangar on Michael Army Airfield on the Dugway Proving Ground after two successful days of practicing sample capsule recovery. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
Members of the sample curation team wheel the capsule into the cleanroom after it was delivered from its landing spot in the desert. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
A replica of the sample capsule shows the heatshield (white) and the back shell (tan) after a test on Aug. 30, during which the capsule parachuted down onto the "landing ellipse" after being released from a helicopter. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
A replica of the sample capsule safely enclosed in a cargo net dangles underneath a helicopter during delivery to the temporary clean room. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
Helicopters fly out from Michael Army Airfield on the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to bring the sample recovery team to the "landing ellipse." (Chris Richards/University Communications)
The sample recovery team walks out onto the tarmac to the waiting helicopters that are going to take them to the "landing ellipse" – the designated landing area for the OSIRIS-REx sample capsule. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
The sample recovery team walks out onto the tarmac to the waiting helicopters that are going to take them to the "landing ellipse" – the designated landing area for the OSIRIS-REx sample capsule. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, UArizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences, and mission implementation systems engineer Anjani Polit, a senior systems engineer in the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, discuss procedures before heading out onto the range to practice recovering the sample capsule. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
The OSIRIS-REx sample recovery team gathers for a briefing on the recovery exercises. The ellipse on the screens demarcates the anticipated area where the capsule is expected to land. (Chris Richards/University Communications)
On the morning of Aug. 29, outside a hangar on the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in the high mountain desert of central Utah, members of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample recovery team began a two-day "dress rehearsal" – their last opportunity to perfect procedures before the first extraterrestrial samples collected beyond the orbit of the moon are expected to land on Earth on Sept. 24.
Currently on its way to Earth, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is carrying a capsule containing an estimated 8.8 ounces of rocky material collected from the surface of asteroid Bennu in 2020. Researchers will study the sample in the coming years to learn about how our planet and solar system formed and about the origin of organics that may have led to life on Earth.
Mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta, University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences and a member of the sample recovery team, was brimming with anticipation during the critical practice run.
"I wanted to personally be out there to greet these pieces of Bennu to our home planet," he said during a news conference hosted by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center following the completion of the two-day rehearsal. "I want to welcome them to the curation facility at Johnson Space Center and get them ready for the adventure we're about to put them on."
Part of that adventure, Lauretta said, will take place at the University of Arizona, where scientists and experts have been busy building world-class laboratory instruments, including state-of-the-art electron microscopes, ion microprobes and a whole suite of ancillary equipment that can extract a wealth of information from even the smallest pieces of asteroid material.
One of the mission's biggest surprises came when the spacecraft's sampling arm extended into the asteroid surface during sample collection and encountered almost no resistance, said Lauretta, who likes to call Bennu the "trickster asteroid."
"It has challenged us every step of the way," he said. "We thought we were going to touch down on a solid surface, but it responded actually more like a fluid, like if you dropped yourself in a ball pit at a children's playground."
The good news, he said, is that because of that soft surface, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was able to collect an "enormous amount of material."
"We believe that we have at least four times as much material in that sample return capsule as we promised NASA when we designed the mission," Lauretta said. "More than 8 ounces, or about 250 grams, and boy, is the science team excited to get that."