NASA researchers on Wednesday will share how they plan to retrieve rock samples plucked from the surface of an ancient asteroid next month — an unprecedented feat for the United States.
NASA's news conference is scheduled to begin no earlier than 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Aug. 30. Watch it live in the player above.
On Sept. 24, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release a capsule containing the samples it took from the asteroid Bennu before continuing onward to study a different asteroid, named Apophis. That capsule is expected to parachute to Earth and land in the desert at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range.
The OSIRIS-Rex mission kicked off Sept. 8, 2016, and it took just over two years for the spacecraft to arrive at Bennu. As the asteroid orbits the sun, it swings closer to the Earth about every six years. After spending some time mapping Bennu, researchers used observations made by OSIRIS-REx to select the place where the spacecraft would take its sample — a spot on the asteroid dubbed Nightingale.
On Oct. 20, 2020, OSIRIS-REx successfully pulled off its attempt to collect a sample from Bennu. The spacecraft briefly touched down on the asteroid's loose surface, using a gust of nitrogen gas to dislodge a cloud of rocky debris, some of which the craft captured in its sample collector, according to the mission.
This week serves as a kind of dress rehearsal for the OSIRIS-REx team. Researchers involved with the mission will go over their protocol to ensure they're ready to transport the capsule to a clean room without exposing it to any terrestrial contaminants that could interfere with the samples inside, according to NASA.
Bennu has been around for billions of years. Researchers believe the asteroid's composition hasn't changed much since the (relatively) early days of our solar system, and that it represents a kind of building block of rocky planets, the agency said. Bennu may also have organic materials that resemble the ones that could have helped jumpstart life on Earth.
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"OSIRIS-REx's many accomplishments demonstrated the daring and innovative way in which exploration unfolds in real-time," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement when OSIRIS-REx began its return trip in 2020.
"We have a primordial piece of our solar system headed back to Earth where many generations of researchers can unlock its secrets," he said.