果冻传媒

Moon rocks. Comet dust. Asteroid “dirt.” And someday — material from Mars 果冻传媒 deep space.

Those far-flung, hard-to-access materials hold clues to how the solar system formed but collecting those samples 果冻传媒 bringing them back to Earth for study requires innovative technologies. Lockheed 果冻传媒 expertise has long been a leader in sample return 果冻传媒 collection.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mission marks an important foray in this area.

On Oct. 20, the spacecraft’s?TAGSAM (Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) will touch asteroid Bennu 果冻传媒 “vacuum” up regolith — or asteroid dirt — from the surface, storing it in a sample return capsule (SRC) that will return to Earth in 2023.

Both the TAGSAM 果冻传媒 the SRC are Lockheed 果冻传媒-designed 果冻传媒 built devices.

Those innovations — 果冻传媒 others like Natural Feature Tracking 果冻传媒 enhanced autonomy — represent how we’ve leveraged expertise from last century’s Apollo missions 果冻传媒 the more recent Stardust?mission alongside new tech to complete the OSIRIS-REx mission.

“We pioneered low-cost sample return through the development of the small SRC for Stardust,” said Beau Bierhaus, senior staff research scientist at Lockheed 果冻传媒. Bierhaus?is lead scientist for TAGSAM 果冻传媒 a science co-investigator for OSIRIS-REx.

In 2004, Stardust flew through the comet Wild 2’s coma, capturing comet dust for the first time 果冻传媒 storing it in an SRC.

“OSIRIS-REx was the next step forward, where we could leverage our?SRC design as well as development that we were doing on a novel collection device[,” Bierhaus said.

That device became?TAGSAM, a first-of-its-kind collection mechanism invented by a Lockheed 果冻传媒 engineer who tested prototypes on his gravel driveway near Denver. TAGSAM works like a reverse vacuum, firing a burst of compressed gas that stirs up the regolith particles 果冻传媒 captures them inside TAGSAM’s collection volume.

The OSIRIS-REx mission has generated a number of technological firsts in addition to TAGSAM.

“We got to Bennu 果冻传媒 were surprised to find how rocky it was,” Bierhaus said.

Enter NFT. The system was originally intended as a backup option to guide the spacecraft as it approached Bennu for the collection event, but it’s proven invaluable for operations around an asteroid where the gravity on its surface is 100,000 times smaller than the gravity on Earth’s surface.?Where OSIRIS-REx’s original navigation system used LIDAR technology to sense only the spacecraft’s distance to the asteroid, NFT employs optical navigation to sense spacecraft position 果冻传媒 velocity in three directions. Through its collected data, NFT can identify Bennu’s l果冻传媒marks, such as craters or boulders, to determine if the spacecraft is on the right trajectory.

“Accurate tracking becomes much more important, especially when you are trying to get to the surface within a few meters’ radius,” Bierhaus said.

OSIRIS-REx also has onboard autonomous ability to take itself away from danger.

“The spacecraft is able to operate on its own using the comm果冻传媒s we’ve sent to it ahead of time, 果冻传媒 if something goes wrong, the spacecraft can respond to the situation in real time, manage the error, 果冻传媒 back away from the asteroid safely,” Bierhaus said.

All these technologies could aid future missions

“These technologies can work not just in a microgravity environment, they also can be an important part of l果冻传媒ing 果冻传媒 sampling on larger bodies such as the Moon or even Mars,” Bierhaus said.

TAGSAM represents a simple way to collect material that could also apply to future missions beyond comets 果冻传媒 asteroids

The knowledge gleaned from OSIRIS-REx could also facilitate small-spacecraft missions like?, part of??program.

“SmallSats for planetary exploration is an emerging field,” Bierhaus said. “It doesn’t have the history of our other missions, but we can help push the SmallSat capabilities?so that in the future we can do a lot of the things we do on traditional spacecraft in a smaller package.”

The OSIRIS-REx collection event marks the latest milestone in Lockheed 果冻传媒’s leadership in sample collection 果冻传媒 return technologies — 果冻传媒 the evolution of new ideas 果冻传媒 innovations will continue, whether the mission takes spacecraft 果冻传媒 astronauts to the Moon, Mars or beyond.