Nandkumar M Kamat
OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for ‘Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer’. The goal of the mission is to collect a sample weighing 60 grams from near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu (formerly known as 1999 RQ36) and then to bring the sample to Earth.
Lunar and Planetary Observatory, University of Arizona shed more light on the mission: “OSIRIS-REx seeks answers to the questions that are central to the human experience: Where did we come from? What is our destiny? Asteroids, the leftover debris from the solar system formation process, can answer these questions and teach us about the history of the sun and planets. OSIRIS-REx reached Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid whose regolith may record the earliest history of our solar system. Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans. Bennu is also one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, as it has a relatively high probability of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century. OSIRIS-REx will determine Bennu’s physical and chemical properties, which will be critical to know in the event of an impact mitigation mission. Finally, asteroids like Bennu contain natural resources such as water, organics, and precious metals. In the future, these asteroids may one day fuel the exploration of the solar system by robotic and crewed spacecraft.”
In fact we could see on October 21 the full team of University of Arizona in action as it is spearheading the mission along with NASA and Lockheed Martin. Students, teachers of science, technology and engineering who missed the live transmission of OSIRIS-REx mission with the spacecraft landing to collect samples ( see details at https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex) could watch it here https://youtu.be/A6K2dqCoin8.
Imagine a car-sized spacecraft at more than 300 million kilometres being controlled to descend on a rocky and hazardous asteroid surface to pick pristine samples. Every grain of the sample in an ultra-sealed container which would be dropped in Utah desert in the USA in September 2023 would be studied in a special laboratory in order to understand the origin of life and many other unanswered questions about most ancient material in our solar system. Anytime anything could have gone wrong but as I watched the live transmission from NASA on October 21 night, I was overwhelmed by two things – the way NASA simplified the mission for the whole world and especially for the students, and the hard work which had gone into the mission.
I have just no words to describe the planning and precision engineering that has gone into NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The live transmission totally demystified in clear and crisp language what the mission was all about and what the spacecraft was supposed to do as the viewers couldn’t control their excitement till the last minute. I was comparing NASA and ISRO and our and American education systems. Throughout the live transmission I found that NASA was aiming at the curious students unlike in India where they are wasting huge amounts of time in coaching classes and just memorising information to answer direct questions to get full marks. The real challenge is understanding and developing the proficiency in any subject and such missions ignite the right amount of curiosity in the minds of students who love science as a subject.
Students of technology and engineering must watch the recording of the live transmission to understand the wonder of precision engineering and remote communication. The programmers of on-board software of OSIRIS-REx mission could be some of the best, as the spacecraft behaved absolutely faultlessly. It was so wonderful to see the images returned by the spacecraft which confirmed its success. The images show us the sample collecting pad descending to the surface, the dust that is scattered as the nitrogen gas under pressure is fired to disturb the surface deposits and then some of these enter the sample container and get sealed automatically. In the live transmission I could see how in the first part they described the theoretical and programming aspects and the results of various trials. So obviously viewers began to wonder whether theory and planning would match actual experiment. And it did with hundred percent success.
You can’t teach the hard, verifiable principles of science to any student in any other way – they must see the proof before the eyes and this 90-minute recording has that proof. They must know that once you have a hypothesis it can be tested scientifically – we can test it and prove whether it is right or wrong. NASA proved the hypothesis right. NASA had a hypothesis that it could send a robotic spacecraft to map and then program it to descend on the surface and collect a sample from an asteroid and then return it back safely to Earth.
Students and members of the general public can join the NASA event on October 27, 2020, from 10:30-11:30 p.m. IST, by virtually tuning into a live ‘Getting to Know Goddard’ session about the OSIRIS-REx Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event. The one-hour online event features Jason Dworkin, a project scientist for the OSIRIS-REx mission, and Amy Simon, an instrument scientist for OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer. Both are from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA has informed that the session will be available free to the public at: https://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-gsfc. This is a grand opportunity to students to get first-hand knowledge about this mission. Don’t miss it.
