Rock and dust samples collected by the Osiris Rex probe from the distant asteroid Bennu will arrive on Earth in 2020. Landing is expected at 17:55 in the desert of the American state of Utah. In 13 minutes, the sample capsule must slow down from 43,000 km/h to 20 km/h. The first step was successfully completed: the Osiris Rex probe launched a sample capsule to Earth at 1:42 p.m.

The final 13 minutes are crucial: the capsule will enter the atmosphere at over 43,000 km/h and the heat shield will be put to the test as temperatures exceed 3,000 degrees Celsius.

The first parachute will open 11 minutes before landing on Earth, when the capsule will be at an altitude of 33,000 km, and the main parachute will open 5 minutes and 10 seconds before zero time.

Four helicopters will arrive at the landing site of the capsule and the samples will be taken to the so-called “clean room”, a sterile room where the container inside the capsule, the container that contains the samples, will be removed. From this room, the container will be transported under special conditions to a place where detailed analyzes will be carried out: the Johnson Space Center in Texas. The samples will be distributed to 60 laboratories around the world for study.

The decisive moment occurred at 13:42 when the Osiris Rex probe, being at a distance of 102 thousand km from Earth, launched a special capsule that brings samples from Bennu. Four hours passed between liftoff and the time the capsule reached the ground at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, the Utah Test and Training Range. The capsule could fall on an area of ​​650 km2.

How much material will the probe bring back from Bennu? The average estimate is 250 grams, plus or minus 100 grams. At best, it will be 351 grams of gravel, and at worst – 149 grams.

It will essentially be a cup full of gravel, and we won’t know exactly how much until we analyze the samples. By comparison, Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe brought back just 5 grams of material from asteroid Ryugu in December 2020.

NASA is confident that everything will be fine, and engineers hope that there will be no repeat of the failure of 2004, when the capsule of the Genesis mission, which delivers samples of the solar wind, fell to Earth at a speed of 300 km/h. the parachute did not deploy.

Asteroid Bennu was discovered in 1999, and a mission to it was announced in 2011.

Bennu may provide clues as to how Earth, bombarded by asteroids from space in its early days, became fertile ground for the emergence of life.

The mission was launched seven years ago. More precisely, in September 2016, the Osiris-Rex probe was launched, two years later it arrived at asteroid Bennu and spent a year mapping it, and then NASA employees selected the spot where the probe touched the surface in an attempt to take soil samples. . On October 20, 2020, samples were successfully collected.

Asteroid Bennu is almost half a kilometer in diameter and is estimated to have appeared 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the birth of the solar system. “Asteroids are kind of time capsules floating in space, and they can give us fossil samples from the early days of the solar system,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division.