• One step closer to touching asteroid Bennu (OSIRIS-REx)
• OSIRIS-REx spacecraft carries out first of two rehearsals before sampling asteroid (SpaceflightNow)

This story is one that is near and dear to us. The OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully completed a dress rehearsal of collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu’s Nightingale crater. While they didn’t actually reach out and touch Bennu on this go around, the mission team did prove that the spacecraft can successfully deploy and retract its sample arm, and that it is capable of all the necessary orbital maneuvers to dive down to the surface and then return safely to a standard orbit. As part of the trial run, the mission team acquired amazing images of the asteroid’s surface that are key to verifying the space craft’s potential for successful sampling. They also took science data, including spectrometry to study the composition of rocks at this site.

During this rehearsal, the OSIRIS-REx mission travelled within 75 m or 246 ft of Bennu’s surface – this is the closest they’ve ever approached. For the next several months, the team will analyze all the data and telemetry from the mission as they prepare to make their first sample collection attempt on August 25. If everything goes as planned, OSIRIS-REx will return the sample home on September 24, 2023. 

NASA and all international collaborators have plans in place to keep the sample sterile so that we humans can’t pollute it with our world’s bugs, and so whatever it brings home – if anything – can’t get out to us.

While it’s highly unlikely a smashed up asteroid like Bennu could be home to any form of life, there are plenty of other places in our solar system that seem like just maybe life could be possible.