After Five Years, NASA's OSIRIS-REx Finally Returns To Earth

JAKARTA - After spending two and a half years in space, NASA's OSIRIS-REx satellite will return home to Earth. The spacecraft will carry a large amount of material collected from the asteroid Bennu.

Known, asteroid Bennu is an extraterrestrial object that is not so far from the orbit of Earth. It's just that the journey home for the search robot is claimed to take up to two years.

As reported by Space on Tuesday, May 11, OSIRIS-REx was first launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2016. The spacecraft was commissioned to reach asteroid Bennu in 2018.

The plane spent two years flying near and around the asteroid before collecting debris from its surface last fall. Osiris-Rex's return was the culmination of years of hard work by the mission team.

"Although the team was very happy to examine the asteroid samples upon returning to Earth, they were bittersweet to leave Bennu after spending so much time studying the asteroid up close", said the mission's lead investigator at the University of Arizona, Dante Lauretta.

Lauretta said the spacecraft contained between 200 grams and 400 grams of asteroid chunks. According to reports, OSIRIS-REx will travel a distance of 300 kilometers from Bennu which is currently orbiting the Sun.

The SUV-sized spacecraft will circle the Sun twice before sending its small sample capsule to the Utah desert floor on September 24, 2023, to end a mission that cost more than $ 800 million.

Scientists hope to uncover some of the secrets of the solar system from samples sucked from Bennu's dark, rugged, carbon-rich surface. The asteroid is estimated to be 490 meters wide.

Bennu is considered a fraction of a larger asteroid and is believed to hold the building blocks of the preserved solar system. This piece brought back to Earth could explain how planets formed and how life appeared on Earth.

The valuable samples will be stored in a new laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. To date, it has housed hundreds of kilograms of lunar material collected by 12 Apollo Moon explorers from 1969 to 1972.