Last week, the big story was the touch-and-go sample event, where OSIRIS-REx attempted to collect a sample from our favorite asteroid to hate, Bennu. We all watched live and listened to the team give updates of the procedure as it happened. Then we watched the press conference the next day that talked about what would happen next. And we waited for the weekend to find out just how much sample the spacecraft collected.

It turned out that they collected, well, a lot. When the mission team looked at images of the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), they found that the collector head was overflowing with material. And while they definitely collected more than the minimum 60 grams, they also managed to collect so much material that the mylar flap could not seal shut. It was wedged open by sample, and bits of those rocks we marked were escaping back out into space.

Because Bennu needed to spit more rocks at the universe, apparently.

This overabundance of samples meant that there was no need to return to the surface of Bennu and collect any more rocks. So the decision was made to stow the sample ahead of the scheduled November 2nd date and call that portion of the mission done. As principal investigator Dante Lauretta stated: The abundance of material we collected from Bennu made it possible to expedite our decision to stow. The team is now working around the clock to accelerate the stowage timeline so that we can protect as much of this material as possible for return to Earth.

And accelerate the timeline they did. They announced yesterday that the collector head was successfully placed in the Sample Return Capsule. Then they performed a “backout check”, pulling the TAGSAM arm back out to make sure the collection is secure. Telemetry confirmed that the sample is indeed stowed. Now the team has to perform a couple more commands, and when we have confirmation that everything is nominal and the capsule is sealed, we will let you know.

For now, we wait. And then we wait some more as the sample will not arrive back on Earth until 2023.

More Information

NASA press release 

OSIRIS-REx press release