#tagsam

[frogshunnedshadows]

We're going to get a physical sample of an asteroid returned to the Earth this Sunday, September 24, 2023.

[xipiti]

The aluminum canister containing bits of an ancient space rock has finally been opened, revealing the bulk of the asteroid Bennu sample in all its glory.

Earlier this month, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team managed to crack open the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head after developing new tools to deal with two stuck fasteners that stood in the way of the asteroid sample. With the sampler head finally open, NASA revealed the remainder of the unseen samples—and whoa is there ever a whole lot of asteroid inside. That’s great news for science teams around the world who are waiting to receive a piece that may contain clues about the origin of the solar system.

The photograph below was captured by the creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA), Erika Blumenfeld, and the project lead, Joe Aebersold, using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure, according to NASA.

A few steps remain before the bulk of the asteroid sample can be removed. The curation team will now remove the round metal collar and transfer the remaining sample from the TAGSAM head into smaller sample trays in the shape of a pie wedge. These trays will be photographed before the sample is weighed, packaged, and stored at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

[mindblowingscience]

It's been over 3.5 months since NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped off its precious sample of asteroid dust, and scientists have finally managed to get the lid off the sample container. Now, the team can finally complete the steps needed to disassemble the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) container, and access the rocks and dirt collected from asteroid Bennu. Once retrieved, the sample can be divvied up and distributed to science teams around the world.

Continue Reading.

[apod]

2023 September 21

Tagging Bennu Image Credit: OSIRIS-REx, University of Arizona, NASA, Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio

Explanation: The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's arm reached out and touched asteroid 101955 Bennu on October 20, 2020, after a careful approach to the small, near-Earth asteroid's boulder-strewn surface. Dubbed a Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event, the 30 centimeter wide sampling head (TAGSAM) appears to crush some of the rocks in this close-up recorded by the spacecraft's SamCam. The image was snapped just after surface contact some 321 million kilometers from planet Earth. One second later, the spacecraft fired nitrogen gas from a bottle intended to blow a substantial amount of Bennu's regolith into the sampling head, collecting the loose surface material. And now, nearly three years later, on Sunday, September 24, that sample of asteroid Bennu is scheduled to arrive on planet Earth. The sample return capsule will be dropped off by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft as it makes a close flyby of Earth. Twenty minutes after the drop-off, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters to divert past Earth and continue on to orbit near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230921.html

[collapsedsquid]

Curation team members at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have successfully removed the two fasteners from the sampler head that had prevented the remainder of OSIRIS-REx’s asteroid Bennu sample material from being accessed. [...] Curation processors paused disassembly of the TAGSAM head hardware in mid-October after they discovered that two of the 35 fasteners could not be removed with the tools approved for use inside the OSIRIS-REx glovebox. In response, two new multi-part tools were designed and fabricated to support further disassembly of the TAGSAM head. These tools include newly custom-fabricated bits made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel; the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes. “In addition to the design challenge of being limited to curation-approved materials to protect the scientific value of the asteroid sample, these new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement,” said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curator at Johnson. “The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success.”

Our top specialists at NASA, developing the cutting-edge tools needed to open the most difficult jars

[osirisapexusrexus]

Feeling cute posting a little tagsam nostalgia for the fans

[kaiyves-backup]

The astromaterials curation team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has completed the disassembly of the OSIRIS-REx sampler head to reveal the remainder of the asteroid Bennu sample inside. On Jan. 10, they successfully removed two stubborn fasteners that had prevented the final steps of opening the Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head.

Erika Blumenfeld, creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) and Joe Aebersold, AIVA project lead, captured this photograph of the open TAGSAM head including the asteroid material inside using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure. The result is an image that shows extreme detail of the sample.

Next, the curation team will remove the round metal collar and prepare the glovebox to transfer the remaining sample from the TAGSAM head into pie-wedge sample trays.

These trays will be photographed before the sample is weighed, packaged, and stored at Johnson, home to the most extensive collection of astromaterials in the world. The remaining sample material includes dust and rocks up to about 0.4 inch (one cm) in size. The final mass of the sample will be determined in the coming weeks. The curation team members had already collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of asteroid material from the sample hardware before the lid was removed, surpassing the agency’s goal of bringing at least 2.12 ounces (60 grams) to Earth.

The curation team will release a catalog of all the Bennu samples later this year, which will allow scientists and institutions around the world to submit requests for research or display.

[beardedmrbean]

The final samples collected from the asteroid Bennu are finally coming into view. Four months after they were dropped off in a Utah Desert and nine days after safely prying open two stubborn fasteners, a team of astromaterials experts at NASA’s John Space Center has revealed the contents of the fully disassembled OSIRIS-REx sampler.

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials.]

On January 19, NASA’s planetary science division posted “It’s open! It’s open!” on Twitter/X along with a photograph of dark dust and tiny rocks inside the canister. The reveal comes after the team successfully removed the remaining two fasteners that prevented them from opening the Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head.

The samples were collected in 2020 from a 4.5 billion year-old near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. According to NASA, the remaining sample material contains dust and rocks that are up to about 0.4 inch in size. The team will determine the final mass of the sample over the coming weeks. Previously, the team collected 2.48 ounces of asteroid material, which surpassed their initial goal of bringing at least 2.12 ounces back to Earth.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History debuted a piece of the asteroid Bennu to the public for the first time in November 2023. The sample was dropped off on Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on September 24, 2023. After the dropoff, the spacecraft continued on to a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX. It is set to explore the asteroid Apophis when it comes within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029.

What’s next for the Bennu samples

While it looks like average rocks and dirt to the naked eye, the sample is actually asteroid material that could hold chemical clues to our solar system’s formation. Evidence of essential elements like carbon in the rocks outside of the main sample container have already been uncovered by NASA scientists and these early samples also contain some water-rich minerals. Scientists believe that similar water-containing asteroids bombarded Earth billions of years ago, which provided the water that eventually formed our planet’s first oceans.

[Related: NASA sampled a ‘fluffy’ asteroid that could hold clues to our existence.]

The asteroid Bennu dates back to the first 10 million years of the solar system’s development, so it gives scientists a window into what this time period looked like. Bennu is shaped like a spinning top and is roughly one-third of a mile across at its widest part–slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall. The space rock is classified as “potentially hazardous” by NASA because there is a slim 1 in 2,700 (about 0.037 percent) chance that Bennu could collide Earth by 2182.

The sample curation team at NASA is expected to release a publicly available catalog of the Bennu samples later this year.

[gaetaniu]

Bennu, raccolti in tutto 121.6 grammi di materiale

Gli otto vassoi contenenti il materiale finale dell’asteroide Bennu. La polvere e le rocce sono state versate nei vassoi dalla piastra superiore della testa del Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (Tagsam). Da questo versamento sono stati raccolti 51,2 grammi, portando la massa finale del campione di asteroide a 121,6 grammi. È finita la pesata del materiale raccolto dalla missione…

[spacenutspod]

It’s official: NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft snagged 121.6 grams of pristine space rocks when it bopped the asteroid Bennu four years ago, more than double the mission’s official science goal, the agency confirmed February 15. Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-Rex is NASA’s first mission to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth so scientists can study our solar system’s origins. After performing its grab-and-go procedure from the diamond-shaped Bennu, the spacecraft dropped its canister into our atmosphere last year (SN: 9/22/23). Engineers swiftly shuttled it off to a specially designed sample curation center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it was placed in a hermetic glove box to prevent contamination by terrestrial material. The diamond-shaped asteroid Bennu, seen here during OSIRIS-Rex’s approach, is a loose rubble pile held together by gravity.NASA Goddard, University of Arizona While researchers have been able to analyze some rocks and dust already, weighing the full sample has been delayed by a couple stuck screws that prevented anyone from accessing the entire contents of the capsule (SN: 10/11/23). Some clever workarounds finally unlocked the full sample on January 10, and it will now be distributed to scientists around the world for study. To learn how engineers got the canister open, as well as what kinds of science the sample will teach us, Science News spoke with Harold Connolly, a geologist at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., who oversees analysis of the material from Bennu. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. SN: Shortly after retrieving the OSIRIS-Rex canister, you were able to collect some sample, right? Connolly: There was lots of dust on the outside of the canister. That was the first material we got, approximately 1 to 1.1 grams or so of fine dust particles. SN: What kinds of problems did you face before you could fully open the main sample container? Connolly: There’s a bunch of fasteners or screws holding the container closed, approximately 32 of them. And two of them we couldn’t loosen enough with the equipment we had. But there’s a mylar flap that moves, which trapped the sample in a container. The curation team at the Johnson Space Center figured out it could just push down the flap. Without removing the plate that was stuck, the team could get sample out from inside the TAGSAM [Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism] head by literally pushing down the mylar flap and scooping it out very gently. We got 70 grams of sample — a lot. But to access the rest of the sample, they had to create a new kind of ratchet wrench screwdriver. The previous screwdriver was starting to flex a little bit, so you might be breaking the screwdriver. It took a special, custom-made screwdriver (shown being operated by OSIRIS-Rex curation engineer Neftali Hernandez) to finally open the canister of dust and rock brought back from the asteroid Bennu.Robert Markowitz/NASA SN: Can you tell me anything about what you’ve found from the sample you have so far? Connolly: It’s a serpentinite. It’s an altered rock where the original rocky material has interacted with water, and that original rocky material must have been rich in olivine and pyroxene and some other common rock-forming minerals on Earth, but changed and altered in a beautiful way. That is a geologic puzzle to figure out. SN: What have we suspected about the history of Bennu that the sample is helping to confirm? Connolly: Oh, there’s a lot. Bennu itself is in a configuration that is not what it originally was. Once upon a time, the pieces that became Bennu were in a much different object, probably a heck of a lot bigger. We’re talking soon after the solar system formed, 4.5 billion years ago. When that object formed, material came together, brought ices with it — and not just water ice, but carbon monoxide and ammonia ice — which means it had to accrete somewhere out past what we call the snow line, out past Mars in the outer solar system. At that distance from the sun, temperatures are low enough for those ices to form. Eventually, the interior of the larger, original object started to heat up because of radioactivity that’s naturally in the material, and that began to melt the ice and become fluid. Fluid began to interact with the parent body to form new minerals — like serpentinite — from the material that accreted. We’ll be teasing out how much of it was altered, how much is relic from the pre-accretion stage, how much is actually from stars that died and injected dust into our solar system. SN: It sounds like a dynamic and complicated history. Connolly: We’re interested in what happened: How did that original parent body change? Was it impacted by another body and smashed apart to create the larger boulders that eventually came together to form Bennu? And how long has Bennu been in this current configuration? How much had it experienced interaction with the sun or with cosmic rays? All these kinds of processes we can tease out by analyzing teeny tiny little bits of sample. SN: Do we have any answers to any of these questions? Connolly: Stay tuned.

[andronetalks]

NASA Finally Opened the Asteroid Container and Holy Crap That’s a Lot of Asteroid

Gizmodo By Passant RabiePublishedMonday 12:10PM  The aluminum canister containing bits of an ancient space rock has finally been opened, revealing the bulk of the asteroid Bennu sample in all its glory.   Earlier this month, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team managed to crack open the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head after developing new tools to deal with two stuck fasteners that…

[nullarysources]

Here's a photo posted by NASA, which can be viewed in extremely unnecessarily high res on their website:

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside. Erika Blumenfeld, creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) and Joe Aebersold, project management lead, captured this picture using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure.

I wanna lick the space gravel

[xipiti]

After months of fidgeting with a canister that contained rocky samples from an ancient asteroid, NASA engineers have finally removed two stubborn fasteners that appeared to be preventing the space agency from collecting the full amount of Bennu’s debris.

The OSIRIS-REx curation team managed to remove the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, where the bulk of the asteroid sample is stored, NASA announced in a blog post on Thursday. The team was forced to develop new tools to help remove the two fasteners that held the sampler head shut since it landed on Earth in September 2023. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston freed the fasteners on January 10.

“Our engineers and scientists have worked tirelessly behind the scenes for months to not only process the more than 70 grams of material we were able to access previously, but also design, develop, and test new tools that allowed us to move past this hurdle,” Eileen Stansbery, division chief for ARES (Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science) at NASA, said in a statement. “The innovation and dedication of this team has been remarkable. We are all excited to see the remaining treasure OSIRIS-REx holds.”

There are still a few disassembly steps left before the remainder of the bulk sample is fully revealed and image specialists can take ultra-high-resolution images of it while it’s still inside the TAGSAM head. Afterwards, the sample will be removed and weighed, and NASA will determine the full amount of rocky debris OSIRIS-REx snagged from Bennu.

[michaelgabrill]

NASAS OSIRIS-REx Curation Team Reveals Remaining Asteroid Sample

The astromaterials curation team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has completed the disassembly of the OSIRIS-REx sampler head to reveal the remainder of the asteroid Bennu sample inside. On Jan. 10, they successfully removed two stubborn fasteners that had prevented the final steps of opening the Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head. Erika Blumenfeld, creative lead […] from NASA https://ift.tt/L6TVKDF

[piyasahaberleri]

Fotoğraf, OSIRIS-REx iyileştirme ekibinin 10 Ocak 2024'te TAGSAM numune kafasının tamamen açılmasını engellemiş olan bağlantı elemanlarından birini çıkarmaya çalışmasını gösteriyor. — NasaUlusal Havacılık ve Uzay Dairesi (Nasa), aylar devam eden bir sürecin peşinden kısa sürede bir asteroitten alınan paha biçilmez malzemeyi hapseden iki inatçı bağlantı elemanının kilidini açtı.NASA, Dünya'ya yakın asteroit Bennu'dan benzeri görülmemiş bir örnek toplamak için ortalama 4 milyar mil yol kat eden Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification ve Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) misyonundan halihazırda 2,5 gram kaya ve toz topladı. .Bununla beraber, Bennu'dan numune toplayan, bir ucunda gizleme kabı bulunan robotik bir kol olan Dokun ve Git Numune Toplama Mekanizması'nın (TAGSAM) içine gizlenmiş bir kapsülde bazı malzemeler erişilemez halde kaldı. CNN bildirdi.NASA, bağlantı elemanlarının numune alıcı kafasını gevşetmek için öncesinden onaylanmış araç-gereç ve aletlerin kullanılmasını gerektirdiğini, böylece numunelere zarar verme yada numuneleri kirletme riskini en aza indirdiğini ortaya çıkardı.NASA'nın Houston'daki Johnson Uzay Merkezi'nde OSIRIS-REx küratörlüğü lideri Dr. Nicole Lunning, yapmış olduğu açıklamada şunları söylemiş oldu: "Bu yeni araçların bununla birlikte torpido gözünün sıkı bir halde sınırlandırılmış alanı içinde emek vermesi, yüksekliklerini, ağırlıklarını ve potansiyel yaylarını sınırlaması gerekiyordu. hareket. "Küratörlük ekibi etkisinde bırakan bir dayanıklılık gösterdi ve sökme işlemine devam edebilmemiz için bu inatçı bağlantı elemanlarını TAGSAM'ın kafasından çıkarmak için inanılmaz bir emek harcama yapmış oldu. Başarıdan oldukca memnunuz."Problemi çözmek için NASA, uzay ajansına bakılırsa "bozulmuş küratörlük torpido gözünde kullanım için onaylanmış en sert metal" olan cerrahi çelikten iki alet üretti. NASA, yakalanan örnek materyalin hala bilinmediğini belirtti.Uzay ajansı, hala "birkaç ek sökme adımı" bulunduğunu söylemiş oldu. Nasa'ya bakılırsa, bu adımlar atıldıktan sonrasında gizli saklı yığın tartılabilir, çıkarılabilir ve fotoğraflanabilir.NASA araştırmacıları Bennu'dan gelen materyali çözümleme ederek hidratlı kil mineralleri ve karbon formunda bolca oranda su ortaya çıkardı. Bilim adamlarına bakılırsa bu kanıt, suyun milyarlarca yıl ilkin Dünya'ya geldiği yönündeki mevcut teoriyi destekliyor."Dünyanın yaşanabilir bir dünya olmasının, okyanuslarımızın, göllerimizin, nehirlerimizin ve yağmurlarımızın olmasının sebebi, bu kil minerallerinin Dünya'ya 4 milyar ila 4 buçuk milyar yıl ilkin inerek dünyamızı yaşanabilir hale getirmesidir." OSIRIS- REx baş araştırmacısı Dante Lauretta Ekim ayında söylemiş oldu."Doğrusu suyun katı maddeye iyi mi dahil edildiğini görüyoruz" diye ekledi.Ek olarak, daha ilkin hasat edilmiş olan Bennu örneklerinden bazıları, onlarca yıl süresince gelecekte yapılacak araştırmalar için gizleme kaplarında hava geçirmez şekilde kapatılmıştır.