NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to drop off rocks, dust and dirt it collected from the asteroid Bennu in 2020.
The landing date was predetermined because late September is when Earth intersects with Bennu's orbit every year. Weather will still be necessary for the sample recovery team. The meteorology team at the West Desert Test Center for U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground inThe target landing area is a 36-mile by 8.
At 8:42 a.m., the capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere. The tire-size capsule carrying the Bennu sample will be traveling at 27,500 mph; after blasting into Earth’s atmosphere, parachutes will open at about 5,000 feet, slowing the capsule down for landing.Ground telescopes will be tracking the spacecraft, and then an Air Force tracking station in Maui will look for a tiny object after the separation.
Bennu is about as wide as the height of the Empire State Building. Before collecting a sample from Bennu, OSIRIS-REx mapped the asteroid, taking detailed images of its surface. After NASA's team brings the sample to a temporary clean room in Utah, pieces of asteroid Bennu will be brought to NASA's Johnson Space Center inPart of the sample will be given to the Japanese Space Exploration Agency in exchange for some of the asteroid samples collected from the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft.
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