OUR SPACE: Looking ahead with OSIRIS-REx | Opinion | unionrecorder.com – The Union-Recorder

Its time to check in with our super-successful asteroid explorer OSIRIS-REx. Its been relatively quiet around our long distance traveling friend lately, so lets recap for a moment.

Launched in September 2016 the spacecraft took a very circuitous approach, taking advantage of gravity assists to reach the mysterious asteroid Bennu. It arrived about two years later and then proceeded to map the asteroid in extreme detail. Bennu proved to have one surprise after another in store. Very little was known about the faraway little alien world, except that it had a very dark surface and was very hard to see with a telescope, and we knew its orbit and size.

All this time we had imagined Bennu as a solid dust-covered rock with a bunch of craters of varying sizes. Maybe a little like the Moon, or like the other asteroids of which we have close-up photos. So the equipment aboard OSIRIS-Rex reflected those expectations. However, Bennu surprised us literally at every turn!

While we anticipated the spinning top shape, which is pretty popular in the asteroid world, everyone was utterly surprised at how rough that little world turned out to be. Instead of dust there were rocks. Rocks of all sizes from pea gravel to giant boulders, and every size in between. In fact, the entire asteroid seemed to be a spinning top-shaped pile of, well, rubble.

One particular science instrument, riding on OSIRIS-REx in duplicate, is a laser. It was designed to shoot beams at Bennus surface and analyze the echoing reflection for mapping purposes, to make it easier to determine where to sample its surface material. However, the incredibly rough surface made this pretty much impossible as the beam would have been reflected every-which-a-way, and so the OSIRIS-REx team had to rely on a lot of image analysis, using a small army of volunteers to narrow down sampling sites where it was safe for the spacecraft to get this close to the asteroid, and where the pebbles were reasonably small so they could be picked up by the touch-and-go sampling device.

You can plan all you want in space exploration there is always a scenario you didnt see coming, and you have to make do with what you have. The good thing is that some awfully smart people are working those missions, and their scientifically creative minds can usually come up with some solution. And so, last October, OSIRIS-REx collected a whole basket full of Bennu goodie-rocks, and they were quickly stowed in the sample-return capsule aboard the spacecraft. The hermetically sealed container will be the only part of the craft actually returning to Earth. And what will happen to OSIRIS-REx?

Well, thats what the mission team is currently debating, and of course the mission needs an official extension, and a budget increase to accommodate the additional time. If that happens, OSIRIS-REx has a chance of going after the infamous asteroid Apophis, after it drops off its precious cargo for landing on Earth. Asteroid Apophis was discovered in 2004 and instantly became a supervillain when preliminary analysis indicated it might crash into Earth in 2029. We now know that Apophis will make a very close approach but will not collide with our fair planet. And because of that OSIRIS-REx has an opportunity to study Apophis, similar to how it was able to explore Bennu. Scientists are particularly excited about learning whether Earths gravity field would actually disturb the surface on Apophis landslides are an easy-to-spot sign of such an interaction.

And of course we want to know as much as we possibly can about this asteroid. Even though its going to miss us this time, its going to be just too close for comfort, and we need to know all we can about it. So lets keep our fingers crossed for that mission extension. It would be a terrible waste otherwise, since OSIRIS-REx is in terrific health, and wed finally get a chance to use those lasers on something and do some awesome science that way.

Mission extensions give us the biggest bang for our buck: the spacecraft is already out there, so no expenses for a rocket, no million chances of things going wrong during a launch, all instruments are tested and working and ready to go it just makes sense. Meanwhile, OSIRIS-REx is going to get ready to leave Bennu in a few months and head back towards Earth, dropping off the sample capsule in 2023 for eagerly waiting researchers. This journey is far from over!

Beate Czogalla is the Professor of Theater Design in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a Solar System Ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com

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OUR SPACE: Looking ahead with OSIRIS-REx | Opinion | unionrecorder.com - The Union-Recorder