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NASA's OSIRIS-REx


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My ears pricked up when I saw "phosphate". From what I read, phosphorous is an uncommon element in the Solar System, but to see it on samples from a carbonaceous asteroid (around 75% of all asteroids) is promising for human ISRU in space.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just look at the stupendous precision of OSIRIS-APEX's interception orbit. Just... look at it:

 

Side question: how's opening the capsule going?

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53 minutes ago, AckSed said:

Just look at the stupendous precision of OSIRIS-APEX's interception orbit. Just... look at it:

Side question: how's opening the capsule going?

To be fair, this is the anticipated trajectory. As always there will be course correction maneuvers along the way to precisely adjust and make up for any under or over burns. For the rendezvous with Earth last year there were 4 maneuvers (and numerous backups that were not needed) to slowly nudge the spacecraft to Earth intercept and landing on target.  Nevertheless the maneuvers are still remarkable:

  • Smallest maneuver 0.1 mm/s; largest 431 m/s
  • 10 orbit insertions; 127 deep space maneuvers 
  • First frozen orbit at a small body
  • 37k optical navigation images
  • Lowest orbit (832 m semimajor axis) around smallest object (490 m ave.) 
  • One safe mode in 7 years (human error outbound cruise)

Arrival to departure:

Also, your timing is great. The stuck fasteners were removed yesterday! https://blogs.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/2024/01/11/nasas-osiris-rex-team-clears-hurdle-to-access-remaining-bennu-sample/

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13 minutes ago, IonStorm said:

To be fair, this is the anticipated trajectory. As always there will be course correction maneuvers along the way to precisely adjust and make up for any under or over burns. For the rendezvous with Earth last year there were 4 maneuvers (and numerous backups that were not needed) to slowly nudge the spacecraft to Earth intercept and landing on target.  Nevertheless the maneuvers are still remarkable:

  • Smallest maneuver 0.1 mm/s; largest 431 m/s
  • 10 orbit insertions; 127 deep space maneuvers 
  • First frozen orbit at a small body
  • 37k optical navigation images
  • Lowest orbit (832 m semimajor axis) around smallest object (490 m ave.) 
  • One safe mode in 7 years (human error outbound cruise)

A lot of paddling beneath the majestic swan, got it. Even cooler!

 

37 minutes ago, IonStorm said:

I find it fascinating that the removal tool, though it's made of a special grade of steel, is similar to an obscure hand-tool that used the pressure from a screwthread to drill through steel... and it uses a quarter-inch Stanley socket.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Team Reveals Remaining Asteroid Sample
Johnson Space Center Office of Communications
JAN 19, 2024

orex-high-res.jpg

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. 

Photo: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-osiris-rex-curation-team-reveals-remaining-asteroid-sample/

 
 
  Bob Clark
Edited by Exoscientist
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  • 3 weeks later...

1st look at asteroid Bennu samples suggests space rock may even be 'a fragment of an ancient ocean world'
News
By Leonard David published 2 days ago
'We're going to be busy for a long, long time. This is an enormous amount of sample for us.'
https://www.space.com/asteroid-bennu-osiris-rex-samples-1st-look-surprises

  Bob Clark

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Wait a sec... Bennu's samples have a crust of phosphates. Asteroids like Bennu make up a large proportion of all asteroids. And Earth's atmosphere is under bombardment all the time from meteorites and micro-meteorites.

How much phosphorous is deposited on Earth yearly by these? It's probably miniscule, but over a million years? Two? Fifty? How did almost all mammalian and reptilian life on Earth come to have biological scaffolds utilising phosphates?

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11 minutes ago, AckSed said:

Wait a sec... Bennu's samples have a crust of phosphates. Asteroids like Bennu make up a large proportion of all asteroids. And Earth's atmosphere is under bombardment all the time from meteorites and micro-meteorites.

How much phosphorous is deposited on Earth yearly by these? It's probably miniscule, but over a million years? Two? Fifty? How did almost all mammalian and reptilian life on Earth come to have biological scaffolds utilising phosphates?

There are other meteorite types with phosphorous (Table 1 https://www.geo.arizona.edu/xtal/group/pdf/EarthScienceReviews_221_2021_103806.pdf). The fairly pure salt is unusual. Some was seen on Ryugu samples as well, but they are different. There is lots of P in the Earth's crust as well. The problem with phosphate is is usually gets bound in insoluble calcium phosphate. Magnesium phosphate is more accessible. There is still a lot of work to figure out the details of the form of phosphate and any organophosphates. 

Phosphate use in biology is far older and more fundamental than animals. Phosphates are a critical subunit of DNA and RNA, lipids, and metabolic intermediates. Here's a classic (and relatively accessible paper if you skip over some of the chemistry) on it https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.2434996

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On 2/8/2024 at 10:51 AM, IonStorm said:

There are other meteorite types with phosphorous (Table 1 https://www.geo.arizona.edu/xtal/group/pdf/EarthScienceReviews_221_2021_103806.pdf). The fairly pure salt is unusual. Some was seen on Ryugu samples as well, but they are different. There is lots of P in the Earth's crust as well. The problem with phosphate is is usually gets bound in insoluble calcium phosphate. Magnesium phosphate is more accessible. There is still a lot of work to figure out the details of the form of phosphate and any organophosphates. 

Phosphate use in biology is far older and more fundamental than animals. Phosphates are a critical subunit of DNA and RNA, lipids, and metabolic intermediates. Here's a classic (and relatively accessible paper if you skip over some of the chemistry) on it https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.2434996


 Thanks for those refs. You must have done a lot of reading on astrobiology. Interestingly, it has long been known liquid water must have existed or does exist on comets because of the observation of clays and carbonates in carbonaceous meteorites, believed to stem from comets.

Further, evidence of this was provided by the Deep Impact mission to the comet Tempel 1, for which spectrographic observations showed abundant clays and carbonates:

Space
Comet's minerals hint at liquid water
By Maggie Mckee
8 September 2005
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7971-comets-minerals-hint-at-liquid-water/

 The question was how liquid water could exist in comets which spend must of their time out in deep space. One theory was radiogenic heating. This is also proposed as an explanation of the liquid water known in the subsurface of the Saturn moon, Enceladus.

 By the way, astrobiology has the unique distinction of being a field of study where you don’t even know the subject exists. My opinion, this question will soon be answered in the affirmative.

  Robert Clark

Edited by Exoscientist
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I have done a lot of reading. Though my Ph.D. Is in biochemistry, my career and dissertation  have been on astrobiology (and exobiology when it was called that).  We know from the Stardust mission that there are high temperature grains in comet Wild 2, and presumably other Jupiter family comets. This point to the early solar system being well mixed. There are also minerals that indicate aqueous history (copper iron sulfide) in Wild 2. It could mean cometary micro liquid phases, oceans, or transport from other objects. We need a comet surface sample return mission to find out. The meteorites hypothesized to come from a comet (e.g., CI1 type) but without an unaltered comet to compare against we can’t know. It has been theorized that Ryugu and Bennu are extinct comets. Also note that the distinction between comet and asteroid is fuzzy.  

Edited by IonStorm
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43 minutes ago, IonStorm said:

Also note that the distinction between comet and asteroid is fuzzy.  

I see what you did there...

It makes sense, since a comet is merely an asteroid still loaded with volatiles that get baked out into a fuzzy tail when it is close enough to the Sun. It also helps being in a highly elliptical orbit that keeps it frozen most of the time. But of course you know all that.

 

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  • 3 months later...
30 minutes ago, tater said:

Any current sense of overall composition of Bennu? Was thinking about mining, and the % of useful elements.

I asked Grok.

"The composition of asteroid Bennu is predominantly carbon-rich, making it a valuable source of information about the early solar system and the origins of life. Bennu is a near-Earth asteroid that contains hydrated minerals, carbonates, sulfites, olivine, magnetite, and possibly other water-bearing minerals. The presence of these minerals suggests that Bennu's parent body experienced multiple water-related episodes before its fragments coalesced into Bennu. Additionally, the asteroid contains organic materials, including glycine, the simplest amino acid, which is a crucial ingredient of proteins. This rich composition makes Bennu a significant target for scientific study and exploration, as it could provide insights into the formation of our solar system and the potential for life beyond Earth."

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Posted (edited)
25 minutes ago, tater said:

I'm looking for %s.

I read it as a two part question.  I did part one.

Iirc, not a metallic asteroid and interest is mostly scientific wrt what was noted above, that is it appears to have signs of a water history and potential signatures of organic basis for life among its ancestors

Edited by darthgently
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2 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I read it as a two part question.  I did part one

Yeah, I read some of the NASA pages on it, and got the sense broadly, but was interested in ballparking the mass of various useful components (the less useful stuff can always be radiation shielding, I guess ;) ).

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Just now, tater said:

Yeah, I read some of the NASA pages on it, and got the sense broadly, but was interested in ballparking the mass of various useful components (the less useful stuff can always be radiation shielding, I guess ;) ).

I'm eager for the first deep dive on a larger metal asteroid

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Posted (edited)
On 5/11/2024 at 11:54 AM, tater said:

Any current sense of overall composition of Bennu? Was thinking about mining, and the % of useful elements.

The short answer is it is similar to a CI chondrite, which is similar to Solar abundances of refractory elements. It is also very high in H, C, and especially N relative to carbon-rich meteorites. 

Below is combined data of Table 4 and Table 3 from the first paper (just accepted) on the results. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12536 with the elemental abundances.  Missing elements were not measured by these techniques.  The majority is silicate, sulfide, carbonate, and magentite though.  Detailed results in publications to come. Other information can be found in conference abstracts, e.g.:

This public lecture was recorded and I hope it will be made available: https://agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon24/meetingapp.cgi/Session/223328

Element

wt%

H

0.93

He

 

Li

0.000149

Be

 

B

 

C

4.5

N

0.25

O

 

F

 

Ne

 

Na

0.5826

Mg

10.0303

Al

0.8614

Si

 

P

0.1052

S

 

Cl

 

Ar

 

K

0.0542

Ca

0.8527

Sc

0.00061

Ti

0.0453

V

0.0053

Cr

0.2671

Mn

0.1965

Fe

18.8831

Co

0.0531

Ni

1.1588

Cu

0.0134

Zn

0.0325

Ga

0.00101

Ge

 

As

0.000167

Se

0.00249

Br

 

Kr

 

Rb

0.000243

Sr

0.000755

Y

0.000149

Zr

0.000371

Nb

0.000031

Mo

 

Tc

 

Ru

 

Rh

 

Pd

 

Ag

0.000024

Cd

0.000068

In

0.000008

Sn

 

Sb

0.000016

Te

0.000257

I

 

Xe

 

Cs

0.000021

Ba

0.000248

La

0.000024

Ce

0.000063

Pr

0.000009

Nd

0.000049

Pm

 

Sm

0.000016

Eu

0.000006

Gd

0.000021

Tb

0.000004

Dy

0.000026

Ho

0.000005

Er

0.000017

Tm

0.000003

Yb

0.000017

Lu

0.000003

Hf

0.000011

Ta

0.000002

W

 

Re

 

Os

 

Ir

 

Pt

0.00009

Au

 

Hg

 

Tl

0.000015

Pb

0.000245

Bi

0.000012

Po

 

At

 

Rn

 

Fr

 

Ra

 

Ac

 

Th

0.000003

Pa

 

U

0.000001

Total

38.83%

 

Edited by IonStorm
Made table easier to interpret.
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3 hours ago, IonStorm said:

Mostly silicates though 

I didn't notice Si wasn't in the list or missed it.  And I didn't do a running total of ppm either ha.  I defer to your deeper knowledge.  It isn't Psyche, I know that

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7 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I didn't notice Si wasn't in the list or missed it.  And I didn't do a running total of ppm either ha.  I defer to your deeper knowledge.  It isn't Psyche, I know that

Sorry, I responded without sufficient explanation.  The table is based on what a specific instrument is sensitive to. Note the units are parts per million. If you add up everything in the two tables you get a total of 38.8% by mass (18 wt% iron, 10 wt% magnesium, 4.5 wt% carbon, 1 wt% nickel, 1 wt% hydrogen). The rest are the unlisted elements.  I'll go back and make it easier to read.

If you read the paper you will see "The PXRD results (Figure 12) show that phyllosilicates are the dominant mineral phase, constituting approximately 80% of the volume. Sulfides account for about 10% of the volume, while magnetite, carbonate, and olivine contribute around 5%, 3%, and 2%, respectively." This is % by volume, not mass so you need to work in the density and elemental abundance to put them on the same scale, which I appreciate is irritating. 

It is definitely an undifferentiated object, unlike Psyche.

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