Asteroids are remnants of the early solar system. They are leftover pieces as the solar system
was forming, and around the same time that life was forming on the early earth or other bodies.
And so the same chemistry that was happening
that could have influenced the origin of life is preserved on these relics of the solar system.
You know, you can't have a life on a planet unless you have a biosphere, which means you have to have
all the appropriate carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, all kinds of elements you need for
life, and so, if those aren't delivered then you're not going to get anywhere.
Obviously OSIRIS-REx is visiting one of these objects and it's not just visiting
any old asteroid; it's visiting a really appropriate one for these questions about
astrobiology because it's a class of asteroid which we believe is associated with a type of
meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites, which are amongst the most
richest meteorites in terms of their carbon abundance and also their molecular complexity.
So OSIRIS-REx can then attack these various issues in several ways of course one is we
have some instruments on board the spacecraft which will give us a global look at the asteroid.
On October 20th of this year, OSIRIS-REx will attempt it’s first Touch-and-go,
or TAG, event; this will be NASA’s first ever attempt
to sample an asteroid in space, with the hopes of returning it to Earth.
Sample return is the prime objective for the OSIRIS-REx mission. So for fun,
here is a lego version of the spacecraft: it has articulated solar arrays, a sample
return canister and this three-meter long arm, and at the end of this is sort of like an
old car air filter but, of course, a bespoke design for this mission and for this asteroid,
to collect a sample of material and bring it back to earth by touching the surface of the
asteroid collecting at least 60 grams, and as much as two kilograms of material; go up measure
the mass of the material and then stow it in the sample return canister, bring it back to earth.
So when we get these samples back we're going to be interested in these aspects of the samples:
what are their bulk elemental abundances? and also what kinds of specific compounds are present
and what can they tell us about how they formed and where they formed and when
they form? and in particular could any of these molecules have played a role
in helping get life started on the earth or you know any other place?
One of the huge advantages of a sample return mission is that when you get the sample back
to the earth you've effectively added all the world's analytical instruments to the payload
of your spacecraft. okay so you can afford to do analyses of the return samples that would never
happen on the spacecraft some of the instruments we'll use to study the return samples are not
just bigger than the spacecraft they're bigger than the launch pad the spacecraft left from.
That will allow us to uh take a portion of the asteroid and really dig deep into what's there
and then because we have the global data from the in-situ instruments
we can then put all that information in the context of the asteroid as a whole.
60 grams of sample is a bounty. If you look at, say the stardust mission,
it's brought back maybe a milligram of material from comet Wild-2. That revolutionized our
understanding of solar system dynamics and solar system formation.
So 60 grams, which is our baseline, is a huge bounty for the
chemistry and astrobiology community.
The most exciting aspect of this mission is that when we collect the sample,
75 percent of this is archived for future generations. So samples will be studied by
people not yet born, using techniques not yet invented, to answer questions not yet asked.
People who are in school now can make life choices to enable them to study the samples
and ask questions that you just can't think of today or just don't have the ability to analyze.
It's just hard to overstate the power the scientific power you get out of
this this is why missions like OSIRIS-REx are just so powerful it's because mission
gives you a legacy that just extends on into the future and never really ends.
Visit asteroidmission.org to learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission
and watch the upcoming TAG event live.