NASA's OSIRIS-REx nearing launch to collect asteroid sample

In 2004, Dante Lauretta and friends sketched out the concept for an asteroid science mission on a cocktail napkin at the bar in Tucson's Arizona Inn.

This week at Kennedy Space Center, Lauretta will see the SUV-sized NASA spacecraft that emerged from that meeting, the centerpiece of an $800 million NASA science mission, for the last time.

Technicians on Wednesday and Thursday plan to enclose the robotic probe called OSIRIS-REx inside the nose cone of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket scheduled to launch Sept. 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

“I’ve come to really enjoy visiting the spacecraft and seeing it grow up,” Lauretta, the mission’s lead scientist from the University of Arizona, said Saturday at KSC. “I’m happy to send it on the journey to Bennu and back.”

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Bennu is the dark, carbon-rich space rock, measuring about 1,600 feet across, that the mission hopes to begin approaching two years from now.

The asteroid discovered in 1999 is a geologic remnant of the solar system's formation 4.5 billion years ago, potentially holding organic molecules thought to be precursors of life on Earth.

“It’s extremely primitive,” said Christina Richey, deputy program scientist at NASA headquarters. “We have preserved material from the very beginning of our solar system. That’s why this is such an important rock.”

Upon arriving at Bennu, instruments on the spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin will produce the most detailed map ever of an asteroid’s surface study its composition. That information will help identify a target for collecting a sample.

In July 2020, the more than 4,000-pound craft will arrive at what Lauretta called its “golden moment.”

With an 11-foot arm outstretched, it will drop down for a gentle, five-second “kiss” of Bennu. A burst of gas will push at least 2 ounces of loose gravel and dirt in a container.

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“Sample return is what this mission is all about,” said Lauretta.

During more than two years of flying in formation with the asteroid, the mission can make up to three attempts to collect the sample. The team hopes only one is needed, but the asteroid’s makeup remains uncertain for now.

Because the sample collection likely will occur with the asteroid on the other side of the sun from Earth, it will take 18 minutes before mission managers know how it went.

In 2010, a Japanese mission returned particles from a different kind of asteroid. But OSIRIS-REx plans to bring back significantly more material from Bennu.

“This will be the largest sample return since the Apollo era,” said Richey.

A small, solar-powered capsule like one used by NASA’s Stardust mission, which returned comet dust in 2006, will carry the asteroid regolith home to a landing in the Utah desert in September 2023.

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Mission scientists will keep a quarter of it, leaving the rest for future generations to study.

To help ensure any sample collected is a pristine one, precautions are being taken to avoid contamination of the spacecraft and its instruments.

Teams working in a high bay at KSC’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility on Saturday, and media invited to photograph the spacecraft, wore clean room suits and were instructed not to wear perfume, cologne, hair spray, nail polish or makeup. Materials with amino acids, including nylon, were not allowed inside.

During the mission, OSIRIS-REx also will study how heating by the sun helps propel small asteroids, a process essential to accurately predicting their trajectories.

There’s a very small chance — less than one tenth of 1 percent — that Bennu could pose a threat to Earth within the next 200 years.

OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for "Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer."

“It’s really exciting,” Lauretta said of the spacecraft’s encapsulation this week in the Atlas V payload fairing. “It’s the next major step in getting to the launch pad.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.