Image (Credit): Outside view of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector. You an see sample material from asteroid Bennu on the middle right. (NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold)
“As we peer into the ancient secrets preserved within the dust and rocks of asteroid Bennu, we are unlocking a time capsule that offers us profound insights into the origins of our solar system…The bounty of carbon-rich material and the abundant presence of water-bearing clay minerals are just the tip of the cosmic iceberg. These discoveries, made possible through years of dedicated collaboration and cutting-edge science, propel us on a journey to understand not only our celestial neighborhood but also the potential for life’s beginnings. With each revelation from Bennu, we draw closer to unraveling the mysteries of our cosmic heritage.”
–Statement by Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, regarding the recently-arrived sample collected from asteroid Bennu. NASA and its partners are expected to study the sample for the next two years to learn more about the asteroid and our solar system.
It may be Friday the 13th, but the news has been positive about the Psyche spacecraft, which earlier today successfully launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Here is part of a statement by Arizona State University Professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Psyche mission, from back in 2017 as she awaited word on whether the Psyche mission had been green-lighted by NASA:
I’ve only been working on this project for five and a half years. Some of my competitors have been through the process before with the same ideas, and are coming up on a decade of trying to fly their concept. Still, five and a half years. About 150 people have worked on this concept with me. We’ve written about 2,000 pages, including the step 1 and step 2 proposals and all the written, edited, revised, formatted, and published answers to questions that came in between. We have art and models and videos and new scientific and engineering results because of all our efforts to understand how to get to the metal world Psyche and what we might find if we did, and how we could measure it and send the information back to Earth and understand it and interpret it for everyone in the world.
To say our hearts are in this project would be too facile, too surficial, too trite. We have lived and breathed this. We know and love each other and we know each other’s families and we have learned when to be quiet and let the other person work through a peak of frustration late at night after no rest for weeks. We have sweated through countless reviews and celebrated with numerous cakes and dinners the many intermediate successes that allowed us to get here, the ultimate intermediate success, the privilege to wait for the phone call.
Here is PI Lindy Elkins-Tanton’s quote from earlier today:
We said ‘goodbye’ to our spacecraft, the center of so many work lives for so many years – thousands of people and a decade…But it’s really not a finish line; it’s a starting line for the next marathon. Our spacecraft is off to meet our asteroid, and we’ll fill another gap in our knowledge – and color in another kind of world in our solar system.
Congratulations to PI Lindy Elkins-Tanton and her team on a job well done (so far, of course).
Image (Credit): The Psyche spacecraft sits aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket earlier today at Launch Complex 39A. (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
After a number of delays, the Psyche mission appears ready to go as the spacecraft sits at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch is scheduled for tomorrow at 10:16 a.m. EDT.
The spacecraft will not reach the metal-rich asteroid Psyche until 2029. It will then orbit the asteroid for about two years collecting data to learn more about an object that astronomers believe may contain clues about the formation of the rocky planets closest to the Sun.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rending of the New Horizons spacecraft approaching Pluto. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI))
“The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community…The agency decided that it was best to extend operations for New Horizons until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is expected in 2028 through 2029.”
–Statement by Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, regarding the plans for the New Horizons spacecraft. The NASA statement notes that starting in fiscal year 2025, the New Horizons spacecraft will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which does not preclude additional flybys of later identified items in the Kuiper Belt.
Image (Credit): NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule safely situated in the Utah desert earlier today. (Keegan Barber/NASA)
First, let discuss the good news. The capsule carrying the sample material from the asteroid Bennu successfully landed in the Utah desert earlier today, as planned. NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission was a success. The space agency has plenty to celebrate.
And now for the bad news. India’s Chandrayaan-3 moon lander as well as its lunar rover were supposed to wake up around September 22 with the return of sunlight to the Moon’s South Pole. Unfortunately, neither craft showed any signs of coming back online. That said, the India space agency still has plenty to celebrate given its ability to successfully explore the South Pole before night set in.
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