IonStorm

There are so many checks to rehearsals. Everything is slow, deliberate, and careful. One redundancy is that there are 3 gas bottles. If the sample collection does not meet requirements, we can try two more times. Also, we will have enough time to reconstruct what went wrong if we need to do it again. Think of it in KSP terms: Mission Control puts out a contract to do one of a list of missions Players write a proposal to compete to win the contract The next year, mission control selects three who compete again with a more detailed proposal Mission control selects one and hires a panel of experts to pick at the details of the design and budget for three years with the objective of reducing risk. They also pick a rocket for you based on your requirements. Then you start building and testing the spacecraft for two more years. Launch Do science From steps 4-7 there are weekly reports, monthly reviews, and annual decision points (with the option to cancel or pause the mission). This is designed to look at every worst case scenario and design mitigations. Not that nothing bad can happen, like Philae, which suffered multiple overlapping problems (thruster, harpoon, unlucky rock) but still did some great science. See http://caesar.cornell.edu/ for the next mission (currently at step 3, above).

I'm interested in the origin of life and going to an asteroid is a good way to study prebiotic chemistry without the contamination of the biosphere and look at the processes active in the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. I also had formative years exposed to the later Apollo missions. I've been working on OSIRIS-REx (and its precursor concepts) since 2004, this is a huge milestone to getting the sample in 2023. It is a relief to see Bennu consistent with our predictions and crossing off risks as everything continues to go flawlessly (fingers crossed). I find it to be thrilling and nostalgic.

Amazingly, that is the same boulder predicted by the 2011 radar study. The asteroid is about 500m across, so maybe 20-50m. There will be a detailed lidar model (courtesy of the Canadian lidar, OLA), which can be imported into real solar system at some point . The image is shown with the Bennu's north pole up, which is in the same direction as the solar system south.

If you folks are getting tired of the updates, I can stop. If I don't hear complaints, then I'll keep posting. https://www.asteroidmission.org/bennu-rotation_20181102/

Bennu continues to grow https://www.asteroidmission.org/bennu-at-160-and-200-px/

I have no doubt that there will be a manuscript written about this. The similarities are striking. We'll find out next week or so if Bennu's boulder density is as high as Ryugu. Another point is that this is the first time that the radar model of an asteroid has been confirmed optically, and it was remarkably accurate. We'll be generating a high resolution shape model in the coming year. Naturally, this will be available (as is Ryugu's) for adding to KSP RSS.

Here it is, in glorious ~5m/pixel resolution https://www.asteroidmission.org/20181029t1019ut_bennu/ More to come...

It's at the University of Arizona, so a state not federal government office. The room we're in is all work and no play. Not so through the window where you see Pen Rex, the unofficial mascot, guarding donuts as I recall. https://twitter.com/rex_pen

The science downlink comes to the Science Processing and Operations Center (SPOC) in Tucson, AZ, USA via the Deep Space Network (DSN). I can VPN into the SPOC from anywhere. I have sat in a SPOC operations room and watched telemetry before (for example when the REXIS cover opened, below image [ITAR/IP redacted] (the red alarms were expected, so don't worry about them)) but not usually. Spacecraft operations, like burns, are conducted at the Mission Operations Center (MOC) at Lockheed Martin, Denver, CO. Today I watched a live stream of the telemetry downlink during the burn today while I did other work. It is cool, but I don't add value to the mission by watching. Since my expertise is in sample analysis, not imaging, spectra, navigation, etc., I gladly let the experts analyse the data and I enjoy their reports.

A busy week for OSIRIS-REx. The TAG arm has been unstowed and wrist articulated (see position in the image), another successful breaking maneuver (two 2.6 m/sec burns), new images of Bennu are scheduled to be released this week.

Bennu starts to come into focus

The TAGSAM cover was deployed and verified by measuring the change in mass of the spacecraft by moment of inertia differences. Also, Bennu is now visualized at >1 pixel for the first time. The images represent Bennu at 1.09 pixels, 1.71 pixels and 3.75 pixels, and were obtained on Oct. 13, 14 and 15, respectively. From the first to the last image, OSIRIS-REx’s range to Bennu decreased from around 33,350 km to around 9,750 km.

A main engine (monoprop) burn of 351 m/s which took 11 min 15 s.

New Frontiers is the mid-sized planetary missions and the largest principal investigator lead ones. The programmatic goal is to select two missions per decade. So far New Horizons (Pluto/MU69), Juno (Jupiter), OSIRIS-REx (Bennu), and either Dragonfly (Titan) or CAESAR (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) are the missions. Both Dragonfly and CAESAR are cool (and tied for first place in science), but I'm a member of the CAESAR team (which will use ion propulsion to collect and return a sample of the icy surface of the comet that ESA's Rosetta mission mapped). The two teams will work for a year to refine the risk posture and engineering requirements so the New Frontiers program can select one. Learn more about New Frontiers here https://planetarymissions.nasa.gov/missions/new frontiers. Information about CAESAR will be made public on January 17, 2018 at 3:15pm PST at the Small Bodies Assessment Group meeting. You can watch for free here https://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/. I presume that Dragonfly will have information at the Outer Planets Assessment Group https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/ but I'm not particularly plugged in to that community. Both missions will have 5 abstracts each at the 2018 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. They will be posted here https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2018/ However, since it is still an active competition between the two mission concepts, not all details are public yet. Discovery are the small planetary missions, and are also principal investigator lead. These are NEAR (Eros), Pathfinder (Mars), Prospector (Moon), Stardust (81P/Wild 2), Genesis (solar wind), CONTOUR (two comets; lost), MESSENGER (Mercury), Deep Impact (9P/Tempel 1), Dawn (Vesta/Ceres), Kepler (exoplanets; now operated by astrophysics), GRAIL (Moon), InSight (Mars; launching this year), Lucy (Trojan asteroids; in development), and Psyche (Psyche; in development). There are also follow-on missions (e.g. Stardust-Next) and instruments (e.g. M3) on non-NASA missions which are managed out of the Discovery office. See https://planetarymissions.nasa.gov/missions/discovery There was also a Mars Scout principal investigator lead program (Phoenix and MAVEN) about the same cost as Discovery. LRO (Moon) was a human exploration mission that became a science mission, etc. The final class of planetary missions are Flagship. These are large and directed, without a principal investigator, such as Cassini (Saturn), MSL (Mars), Mars 2020 (Mars), Europa Clipper (Europa), etc. All of these missions are robotic. Unlike Kerbals, people generally insist on coming home. Finally, don't forget that OSIRIS-REx (and Hayabusa2) approach their asteroids this summer. The first science and good pictures will be in about a year. Once we have a new shape map and color map of Bennu, I'll make a new challenge.

I have many jobs. Within OSIRIS-REx there is a constant low level of activity with several different weekly status meetings, planning for future major events (“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” Eisenhower), etc. This can also involve travel, not as extensive as during the busy times, but enough. I had a very long interview last month which resulted in only a few comments about travel and lunch here, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/osiris-rex-flyby/541434/, silly but true. I am also Chief (aka department chair) of Astrochemistry, plus I have a research lab to run, papers to write, peer reviewing the work of others, giving presentations to scientists and the public, writing proposals, and a few minor roles on other missions. It is all about maximizing the taxpayer's investments--something we take very seriously.

Yes.

Nicely done. The colors remind me of Earth. I hope the real asteroid is darker and rounder (and larger with respect to the spacecraft), but very pretty. You are also welcome to tweet, instagram, etc. it to @OSIRISREx

I'd be happy to if there is enough interest. I can create a new challenge at arrival in RSS if someone makes a Bennu model based on real data.

Here is today's press release of the Earth-Moon system. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/osiris-rex-snaps-pictures-of-earth-and-the-moon

Data! Science! Gravity! The Earth Gravity Assist went perfectly with the trajectory right down the middle (blue line, the green, yellow, and red are 1, 2 and 3 sigma errors to the 2-way X-band Doppler residuals during the EGA). And the images and spectra look great. http://www.asteroidmission.org/?latest-news=osiris-rex-views-earth-flyby Now on to Bennu, http://52.222.55.61/ http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/orb/misc/osiris_rex/

Primarily the blanketing is for thermal control of the spacecraft. We use Germanium Black Kapton (GBK) which provides better electrostatic dissipation than the gold kind.

We got a 6° plane change, not a speed increase. The effective ∆V imparted to the spacecraft by the angular momentum exchange with Earth as a result of this flyby is 3.778 km/s. This is about 90% more than the 1.986 km/s ∆V capability in the spacecraft’s monoprop system. This velocity change does not mean that the spacecraft either speeds up or slows down by this amount, since much of this change is used change the orbit inclination. There is no EGA event, but the countdown clock was at closest approach. The observing campaign lasts 10 days after with downlinks at EGA +1, +3 and +10. The navigation team breathed easier after contact with Goldstone was re-established after crossing into the western hemisphere with no errors or interruptions.

Thanks! We get instrument calibration data from the Earth and Moon tomorrow.

Indeed. Here is a video of what we are doing.

Yes, just like on our fairing (now somewhere in the Atlantic ocean).