Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside.
Image credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

Those Utah-delivered samples of asteroid Bennu last year by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft are now fully under scrutiny by researchers.

But it took a bit of time.

Two balky fasteners that prevented fully opening the probe’s Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head have been removed revealing the remainder of space rock samples.

The final mass of the sample will be determined in the coming weeks, according to a NASA statement.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx’s principal investigator from the University of Arizona holds a mock up of the asteroid collection device – TAGSAM.
Image credit: Barbara David

Catalog release

The curation team members at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had previously collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of asteroid material from the sample hardware before the TAGSAM lid was removed.

The curation team is on tap now to release a catalog of all the asteroid samples snagged later this year, which will allow scientists and institutions around the world to submit requests for bits of the Bennu collection.

Image courtesy: Dante Lauretta

New mission

In the early morning hours of September 24, 2023 NASA’s first sample return mission of bits and pieces of the asteroid successfully parachuted into the Department of Defense Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah Test and Training Range, roughly 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah.

That extraterrestrial freight from afar came capsule-contained courtesy of the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft itself is far from completing its exploration agenda.

It has been renamed as the OSIRIS-APEX and will study the physical changes to asteroid Apophis after the asteroid’s rare close encounter with Earth in 2029.

OSIRIS-APEX will approach asteroid Apophis during an exceptionally close flyby of Earth on April 13, 2029.
Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

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