Eight Missions are Getting Extensions, Most Exciting: OSIRIS-REx is Going to Asteroid Apophis By Nancy_A
After it drops off the sample return capsule – which will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and land under a parachute in Utah — OSIRIS-REx will be renamed OSIRIS-APEX, which is short for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer. It will then head out to study near-Earth asteroid Apophis for 18 months.“Apophis is one of the most infamous asteroids,” said OSIRIS-REx deputy principal investigator Dani DellaGiustina.
OSIRIS-APEX will not collect a sample, but when it reaches Apophis, it will study the asteroid for 18 months, and also collect data along the way. It also will make a maneuver similar to the one it made during sample collection at Bennu, by approaching the surface and firing its thrusters. This event will expose the asteroid’s subsurface, to allow mission scientists to learn more about the asteroid’s material properties, the team said.
OSIRIS-APEX will take advantage of the high-resolution camera and instruments on board the spacecraft, snapping images and collecting data to provide an unprecedented study of Apophis. DellaGiustina, who will become the principal investigator for the new mission, said that the spacecraft was designed “to get up close and personal with the object. Our spacecraft is really phenomenal at that.
Other extended missions are for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been at the Moon since 2008 and New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015 and is currently traveling through the Kuiper Belt, looking for a new object for closer study. It flew past a strangely shaped KBO named Arrokoth in 2019.
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