OSIRIS-REx Sample Curation Rehearsals

Released Friday, July 28, 2023

ID: 14388

OSIRIS-REx team members practice extracting samples of asteroid Bennu from the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) on June 8, 2023. Teflon spheres were used to represent material from Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. It will deliver an estimated cupful of material from near-Earth asteroid Bennu to Utah’s West Desert on Sept. 24, 2023. After a capsule containing the Bennu samples touches down, its contents will be taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and preserved at the OSIRIS-REx Sample Curation Facility.

In June, team members from the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) practiced disassembling the OSIRIS-REx sample canister and documenting its contents. Teflon spheres were used to represent material from Bennu – a primitive asteroid thought to contain pristine organics from the early solar system. This page provides editor’s resource reels from the rehearsals.

OSIRIS-REx team members practice extracting samples of asteroid Bennu from the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism on June 22, 2023.

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Planets & Moons

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Scientists
- Dante Lauretta (The University of Arizona)
- Nicole Lunning (NASA/JSC)
Producer
- John L. Stoll (NASA/JSC)
Editor
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Public affairs officer
- Shaneequa Vereen (NASA/JSC)
Technical support
- Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems, Inc.)