Gizmodo Science Fair: A Clever Fix Rescued NASA’s Stuck Asteroid Samples

The OSIRIS-REx curation squad is simply a victor of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair for safeguarding pristine samples of an asteroid delivered to Earth. When 2 fasteners got stuck connected the canister containing pieces of asteroid Bennu, NASA’s specialized squad developed caller tools to entree the sample. Their meticulous enactment ensured that planetary contaminants didn’t spoil the past rock, preserving its embedded clues to the star system’s origins.

The question

Can scientists retrieve grounds for the gathering blocks of beingness preserved wrong asteroid samples, without Earthly contaminants getting successful the way?

The results

The OSIRIS-REx ngo launched successful September 2016 and reached a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu successful December 2018. After astir 2 years of observations, the spacecraft landed connected the asteroid and snagged a illustration from its surface. Collecting bits of an asteroid was a analyzable task, but different challenges awaited.

© Vicky Leta/Gizmodo

The genuinely tedious enactment began successful September 2023, when a canister containing stone and debris from the asteroid made a parachute-assisted landing successful the Utah desert. Ground teams moved swiftly to retrieve it and transport it to a cleanable room, wherever it was connected to a continuous travel of nitrogen. The nitrogen purge, arsenic scientists telephone it, is designed to forestall Earthly contaminants getting anyplace adjacent the pieces of Bennu, ensuring the illustration remains axenic for technological analysis.

There was 1 problem, however: The TAGSAM caput (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism), wherever the bulk of the asteroid illustration is stored, was stuck. The ngo returned to Earth with astir 250 grams of asteroid, positive different 70 grams successful bonus material recovered extracurricular of the illustration container. However, two of the 35 fasteners connected the TAGSAM caput could not beryllium removed with the pre-approved tools for usage successful the OSIRIS-REx glovebox, blocking ngo teams from accessing the precious worldly inside.

Photo: NASA/Keegan Barber

In November 2023, the curation squad began processing caller tools that could acceptable wrong the specialized glovebox; it took 2 months, but the engineers were yet capable to region 2 pesky fasteners from the sampler caput with the assistance of the caller tools.

Why they did it

This was NASA’s archetypal ngo to retrieve samples from an asteroid successful space. The extremity was to instrumentality worldly untouched by Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why, erstwhile the asteroid illustration reached Earth, safeguarding it became the mission’s apical priority.

“It’s a two-phase approach; arsenic acold arsenic retrieving the sample, there’s the process for disassembling the tags, which is simply a precise analyzable mechanism, and the different attack is making definite you person the close tools and the close instrumentality to assistance you bash that,” said Salvador Martinez, OSIRIS-REx pb exertion improvement engineer. “Our engineering squad was looking astatine the process and past processing immoderate hardware…making prototypes, going done investigating and evaluating however things worked, making definite that we gave them each the instrumentality that we deliberation was needed.”

“Before the illustration gets here, you hole arsenic overmuch arsenic you perchance can, and arsenic we know, things travel backmost from abstraction and there’s ever a immense grade of uncertainty with immoderate of these things,” helium added.

Meteorites that autumn to Earth connected their ain are contaminated by the process, and it becomes hard to hint their root successful the immense cosmos. With the Bennu sample, scientists created an accidental to analyse a abstraction stone arsenic though it was inactive retired there. That’s wherever the curation squad came in.

“Our superior extremity is protecting the sample,” said Nicole Lunning, pb OSIRIS-REx illustration curator. “A batch of what we did successful our rehearsals for processing a process of however we were going to instrumentality the tags isolated was focused connected protecting the illustration that was wrong of it, truthful that we could minimize that these rocks mightiness beryllium breached oregon spilled.”

It’s casual to travel up with antithetic tools to loosen up the faulty fasteners, but the instrumentality is doing it without threatening the integrity of the sample.

“That was really reasonably complicated, due to the fact that I cognize from the outside, a batch of radical spot the TAGSAM caput and it’s not that hard to instrumentality isolated if you don’t attraction astir spilling what’s wrong oregon protecting what’s inside,” Lunning said. “And that’s the truly large situation for us.”

Why they’re a winner

Prior to the illustration touchdown, the curation squad went done hundreds of rehearsals. Team members had been disquieted astir the anticipation of a stuck illustration caput and tried to hole for it arsenic overmuch arsenic possible. Since this had ne'er been done before, however, determination were truthful galore unknowns.

Bennu is simply a small, near-Earth asteroid that makes a adjacent walk to Earth each six years oregon so. The asteroid whitethorn person breached disconnected from a overmuch larger carbon-rich abstraction stone astir 700 cardinal to 2 cardinal years agone and drifted overmuch person to Earth since then. The $1.16 cardinal OSIRIS-REx ngo was highly analyzable from the get-go, and it had present travel down to 2 fasteners. The curation squad tasked with retrieving the illustration was faced with an immense challenge: get the Bennu bits retired without compromising the full mission.

Scientists performed an aboriginal investigation of the asteroid illustration and recovered an abundance of c and h2o molecules, supporting the mentation that the gathering blocks of beingness whitethorn person made their mode to Earth via abstraction stone impacts. There’s inactive plentifulness much of Bennu to beryllium analyzed.

What’s next

“After we got those fasteners removed, it was a small spot similar clip traveling backmost to wherever we expected to person been successful precocious October,” Lunning said. “We had each this instrumentality and different things stockpiled and cleaned that had been sitting ready, and truthful we benignant of got backmost connected the way that we’re expecting to beryllium on.”

The returned asteroid pieces are being divided among a illustration investigation squad of 230 planetary scientists for a heavy dive into Bennu’s composition.

Now that the illustration is successful the hands of the processing team, the curation squad tin look backmost astatine the process and effort to fig retired precisely wherefore those fasteners were stuck. The infamous fasteners are portion of the mission’s returned formation hardware collection, and they’ll service arsenic a mode to survey the ngo for aboriginal applications.

The team

Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curator astatine Johnson Space Center; Kevin Righter, OSIRIS-REx lawman curation lead; Christopher Snead, lawman illustration curator astatine Johnson Space Center; Kimberly Allums, curation task pb for OSIRIS-REx and the conception manager for curation; Melissa Rodriguez, contractor pb for NASA’s astromaterials collections; Rachel Funk, OSIRIS-REx laboratory pb processor; Salvador Martinez, pb astromaterials curation technologist for OSIRIS-REx; Neftali Hernandez, astromaterials curation technologist for OSIRIS-REx; Gabriel Lugo, astromaterials curation technologist for OSIRIS-REx; Wayland Connelly, astromaterials curation engineer; Julia Plummer, a tiny particles processor supporting OSIRIS-REx; Mari Montoya, OSIRIS-REx astromaterials particles processor; Jannatul Ferdous, astromaterials processor supporting OSIRIS-REx; Curtis Calva, astromaterials processor supporting OSIRIS-REx; Carla Gonzalez, astromaterials processor supporting OSIRIS-REx.

Click present to spot each of the winners of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair.