In a first, NASA returns asteroid samples to Earth

[tn1911]

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/spac...rth-rcna111474

capsule containing precious samples from an asteroid landed safely on Earth on Sunday, the culmination of a roughly 4-billion-mile journey over the past seven years.

The asteroid samples were collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which flew by Earth early Sunday morning and jettisoned the capsule over a designated landing zone in the Utah desert. The unofficial touchdown time was 8:52 a.m. MT, 3 minutes ahead of the predicted landing time.

Not only for bringing the sample back, but OSIRIS is heading back out to rendezvous with a different asteroid. It's may not bring back samples this time, but it blows my mind it was able to pick up samples from one asteroid, drop it off in a flyby of Earth, then head back out for more experiments.

[arptsprt]

Why on earth (pun intended) would we be wasting billions of dollars on these space and science programs when we could be putting all that money into social programs in this country?

I. Am. Being. Sarcastic.

And I agree, amazing and incredible accomplishment.


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[SpecWired]

I don’t think enough people appreciate how incredible of an achievement this is.

We should be funding our space programs more.

[The Dumb Gun Collector]

Freaking amazing. Shows what America can do when it actually tries

[SteyrAUG]

I don’t think enough people appreciate how incredible of an achievement this is.

We should be funding our space programs more.

Yeah, it really is amazing, but I don't think your average person can digest the complexity enough to appreciate it.

While we got a space thread going, this was actually a pretty cool event. Chances of "just happened to record this" are pretty slim.



Not awesome enough for people who expect the moon to crack in half, but I think this crowd can appreciate it.

[flenna]

So if my math is right- traveling 4 billion miles in 7 years is an average speed of 65,231 mph. Is that even possible? Someone school me on this.

[tn1911]

So if my math is right- traveling 4 billion miles in 7 years is an average speed of 65,231 mph. Is that even possible? Someone school me on this.

Using the sun’s gravity the NASA Parker Solar Probe reached a speed of around 330,000 mph. It did seven Venus flybys over seven years to gradually shrink its elliptical orbit around the Sun using gravity assists to increase its speed.

[Adrenaline_6]

So if my math is right- traveling 4 billion miles in 7 years is an average speed of 65,231 mph. Is that even possible? Someone school me on this.

With many limitations due to earth's atmosphere, speed in a vacuum with no gravity is almost limitless.

[Alex V]

You guys think we will be mining asteroids in our lifetimes?

With many limitations due to earth's atmosphere, speed in a vacuum with no gravity is almost limitless.

Especially when you don't have to worry about accelerating a living being. Computers have a much higher G tolerance than humans.

[tn1911]

You guys think we will be mining asteroids in our lifetimes.

I don’t see any reason why we can’t be doing exploratory mining on asteroids and planetoids within 10 to 20 years.