Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Robert Markowitz/NASA/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Months in the making. Go and touch…touch and go!

Curation team members at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have successfully removed the two remaining fasteners from the sampler head that had prevented the remainder of OSIRIS-REx’s asteroid Bennu sample material from being accessed.

Image credit: Robert Markowitz/NASA/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Image credit: Robert Markowitz/NASA/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Turn of the screw(s)

Two new multi-part tools were designed and fabricated to support further disassembly of the Touch and Go sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) head.

These tools include newly custom-fabricated bits made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel. That’s the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes.

Go to this video of the surgical procedures involved at:

https://youtu.be/HBHSHJ1h2vY?si=EhYAlET-Xc75MXo8

Image credit: Robert Markowitz/NASA/Inside Outer Space screengrab

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

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