Touch, go: NASA prepares for spacecraft's 10-second grab from asteroid

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After almost two years circling an ancient asteroid hundreds of millions of miles away, a NASA spacecraft will spend 4 hour hours descending toward the rock, and 10 seconds churning up samples to collect before it returns.

The van-sized spacecraft is aiming for the relatively flat middle of a tennis-court-sized crater named Nightingale — a spot comparable to a few parking spaces here on Earth. Boulders as big as buildings loom over the targeted touchdown zone.

Then OSIRIS-REx’s 11-foot arm will reach out and touch Bennu. Contact should last for five to 10 seconds — just long enough to shoot out pressurized nitrogen gas and suck up the churned dirt and gravel.Programmed in advance, the spacecraft will operate autonomously during the unprecedented touch-and-go maneuver.

If the first attempt doesn’t work, OSIRIS-REx can try again. Any collected samples won’t reach Earth until 2023. Although NASA has brought back comet dust and solar wind particles, it’s never attempted to sample one of the nearly 1 million known asteroids lurking in our solar system until now. Japan expects to get

 

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