![]() "There's an analogy to the proposed 21st century space mission. "OSIRIS of Egyptian mythology is the god of life and fertility, the god who taught Egyptians agriculture," said Lauretta, also with the University of Arizona. The mythological figure was also chopped up and distributed." But we'll be taking this prebiotic stuff from the asteroid, chopping it up, and distributing it around the planet for scientists to study where we came from. I wasn't' aware of the mythological significance at first. He was doodling with a pad and pen, and he reached over to show me OSIRIS, and how each letter stood for one of the mission goals. "Dante is interested in Egyptian mythology. Dante Lauretta, Deputy Principal Investigator, came up with the acronym when he was jotting down a list of goals for the mission. OSIRIS-Rex is short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer. Tony Phillips | Credit: More Informationġ. Stay tuned.Īuthor: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. But the real action starts, says Drake, when the sample is returned to Earth in 2023.Ī future story from will explain how the sample will be handled upon return and lay out some of the experiments researchers will do with it. The mission team plans near-live coverage of the operations. OSIRIS-REx, however, will hang close, and its cameras will give us window seats to watch its delicate sampling maneuvers. "If you simply pushed your finger into the surface, you'd fly off into space, disappear, and never come back!" That could be pretty tricky, considering asteroids like 1999 RQ36 have so little gravity. OSIRIS-REx wil help NASA learn to navigate near an asteroid, laying the groundwork for landing on one. If researchers can track an NEO's precise path, they can devise a way to nudge the object out of a collision course with Earth. "With enough information, we can project the orbit of a threatening asteroid." "We're the first species that can mitigate asteroid extinction," notes Drake. Instead of dinosaurs prevailing, mammals flourished, evolving into humans. It has a 1/1800 chance of hitting Earth by the 22nd century.Įvidence suggests that a 6-mile wide asteroid smashed into Earth about 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and altering the history of life. That's because 1999 RQ36 is the Near Earth Object "Most Likely to Succeed" – in affecting our destiny, that is. Like the ancient Egyptian god Osiris, the OSIRIS-REx mission is associated with death as well as life, with both our destiny and our origin. This information will increase our understanding of asteroids as well as help the mission team select the most promising sample site. Upon reaching 1999 RQ36 in 2019, the spacecraft's suite of cameras and instruments will spend a year photographing the asteroid and measuring its surface topography, composition, and thermal emissions while its radio provides mass and gravity field maps. OSIRIS-REx's sampling arm stirs up the topsoil using pure nitrogen.
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