In the historic quest to bring samples from across the solar system back to Earth, the best mantra for success may be a simple, familiar phrase: “practice makes perfect.”
At least, that’s the feeling from recent dry runs of the grand finale of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, an acronym for the megamouthful Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer. Launched in September 2016, OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to snare a sample from an asteroid. In October 2020 the spacecraft dutifully gathered bits and pieces of the space rock Bennu, an ancient rubble pile of diverse leftovers from the early days of the solar system’s creation about 4.5 billion years ago. Now, it’s en route back to Earth, seeking to return that precious payload safely to terra firma in a thrilling act of interplanetary derring-do set to unfold in the early-morning hours of September 24.
At the heart of this effort is perhaps 250 grams (no one knows exactly how much yet) of extraterrestrial freight that was grabbed from Bennu using the novel Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), which also stores the sample. That hardware is cocooned within a sample-return capsule that OSIRIS-REx will cast off with split-second precision as it zooms by Earth. After enduring a fiery reentry targeted for the Department of Defense Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah Test and Training Range, roughly 70 miles west of Salt Lake City, the capsule should slow its descent via parachute and touch down somewhere within that remote swath of high desert—presuming, of course, that everything proceeds according to plan.
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