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NASA probe "Osiris Rex" over the asteroid Bennu (photo montage)
Photo: HANDOUT / AFP
During a complex maneuver lasting several hours, the "Osiris Rex" probe was the first NASA missile to take a sample from an asteroid on Wednesday night.
The sample should arrive on earth in three years.
"The missile did everything it was supposed to do," said Dante Lauretta, the mission's chief scientist.
"I can't believe we managed it. It's historical, that's wonderful."
Whether the sample taken is usable and sufficient will only be known in the coming days after "Osiris Rex" has sent further data to Earth, said Lauretta.
The NASA scientists hope for about 60 to 2000 grams of dust, rubble and rocks.
The probe had temporarily left its place in the orbit of the asteroid Bennu and was within a few meters of it.
Using a kind of robotic arm called a "Tagsam" (
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism
), she touched the surface of the asteroid for about five seconds,
ejecting
pressurized nitrogen to stir up sample material.
After sucking up the sample, the probe moved away from Bennu and made its way back into its orbit.
NASA had previously successfully rehearsed the maneuver twice.
"Osiris Rex" took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in September 2016 and arrived at Bennu around two years later.
Since then, the six-meter-long and 2100-kilogram probe (its abbreviation stands for:
Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer
)
has been orbiting
the asteroid and examining it with its scientific instruments and cameras.
The deep black Bennu, named after an ancient Egyptian deity, has a diameter of around 550 meters and could come very close to earth in a good 150 years.
Even if the risk of impact is very low, Nasa Bennu is one of the most dangerous asteroids currently known - and therefore wants to research it very carefully.
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Asteroid Bennu - photographed by the "Osiris Rex" probe
Photo: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona / HANDOUT / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
In addition, the scientists hope that the mission, which cost around one billion dollars, will provide information about the formation of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, because asteroids are remnants of it.
In 2023, "Osiris Rex" is expected to drop the container with the asteroid samples with a parachute over a desert in the state of Utah.
Then NASA researchers can evaluate the material.
In 2005 the Japanese space probe "Hayabusa" landed on an asteroid.
In 2010 she brought the first soil samples ever collected from such a celestial body to earth.
There have been other flights to asteroids, but no other probe has so far returned material to Earth.
Icon: The mirror
oka / dpa
