NASA's OSIRIS-REx will release an asteroid sample capsule this September, aiming for a landing in the Great Salt Lake Desert, with teams ready to address challenges during its descent and recovery. This September, after traveling billions of miles through our solar system, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecr
OSIRIS-REx collected a half-pound sample from the surface of asteroid Bennu in October 2020. The mission’s sample return capsule will land with aid of a parachute – like the training model shown here in an August 30 test – on September 24 at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range in the desert outside Salt Lake City.
“Before we launched seven years ago, the capsule had to be designed for all the weather conditions we thought were reasonable for Utah in September,” said Eric Queen, a research engineer with the Entry, Descent and Landing team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In support of the OSIRIS-REx mission, the team will deploy weather balloons in the days leading up to the landing. The single-use balloons soar to altitudes around 60,000 feet, or 18,288 meters — about twice as high as a commercial jet flies. Rising 18 feet per second, they transmit data on temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind before bursting high up in the atmosphere. The mission will use these observations to estimate a likely landing location on the range.
The capsule will be traveling at around 1,150 mph when it deploys its drogue parachute over the training range. A round, main parachute will open closer to the ground to soften the landing. Unlike other designs, the round shape is less likely to be caught by a breeze, increasing drag and stability as the capsule descends. This reduces its chance of being blown off course, which could make it harder to find on the ground.
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