If you are traveling over 200 million miles to snag a sample of an asteroid, you want to make sure it's worth it. The following scientists are part of the OSIRIS-REx mission - NASA's first mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth. They have just published a collection of papers that confirm that asteroid Bennu - the target of OSIRIS-REx - is an ideal candidate to reveal clues about the origins of life in our solar system. These discoveries complete the OSIRIS-REx mission's pre-sample collection science requirements and offer insight into the sample of Bennu that scientists will study for generations to come.

The discoveries tell us that Bennu:

• Contains carbon-bearing, organic materials
• Likely used to interact with water
• Has a type of porous rock that would offer a new, unique perspective to our meteorite collections on Earth
• Is made up of an interior not uniform in density
• Contains ridge-like mounds that stretch from pole to pole and has differently shaped hemispheres
• Has areas, including our sample site, that have not been exposed to a lot of space weathering

Read the press release on these discoveries: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2002/osiris-rex-unlocks-more-secrets-from-asteroid-bennu

Participants:

• Michael Daly – OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter Instrument Scientist, York University
• Daniella (Dani) DellaGiustina – Planetary Scientist, OSIRIS-REx Image Processing Lead Scientist, University of Arizona
• Jason Dworkin – Astrobiologist, OSIRIS-REx Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Hannah Kaplan – Planetary Scientist, OSIRIS-REx Spectral Mapping Lead, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Jay McMahon – OSIRIS-REx Deputy Lead Gravity Science Team, The University of Colorado Boulder
• Benjamin Rozitis – Planetary and Space Scientist, The Open University
• Amy Simon – Planetary Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Ask us about what we've already learned from Bennu and what we can learn from a sample of this asteroid! We'll be answering questions from 2 - 3pm ET (18 - 19 UT), ask us anything!.

Proof: https://twitter.com/NASASolarSystem/status/1314594121068113920

Username: /u/nasa

The Perseverance rover will be landing in about a week, and it's big mission is to drive around Jezero crater collecting samples. Then the plan is for two more missions to be launched in 2026 to send a rover, a launcher and a return ship to bring those samples back to Earth.

Meanwhile SpaceX has ambitious plans to send humans to Mars in 2026, and even if they miss that target, it seems like they could at least get an uncrewed Starship to Mars by 2026 or 2028? Which would allow a return trip in 2028 or 2030, and that ship would have plenty of capacity to bring back tons of samples.

Obviously Starship development is still in early stages, and it's tough to predict when it'll be orbital, or capable of getting to Mars. And getting back from Mars is even more difficult. But it seems like worst case, one starship could bring a large enough sample return rocket to get the samples off Mars and headed back towards Earth? Potentially as early as a 2024 landing, but the chances should improve significantly by 2026 or 2028.

Also, what are the chances that NASA and ESA actually have both missions ready to launch in 2026? That seems like a tight schedule considering the pace of past missions and the fact that official plans for the mission haven't been publicly announced yet? And it seems like they're planning to use very efficient, but slow, transfers to get to Mars and back, with samples only getting back to Earth in 2031 according to the current estimates.

Could it be that NASA is intentionally dragging their feet a bit planning this mission, to give SpaceX a chance to prove out Starship, so they could switch to using that for the sample return? Otherwise it seems like there's a chance that NASA could plan a very ambitious and complicated and expensive missions to return some samples, and SpaceX will make the whole thing redundant in the middle of the mission's life by having some people just grab a bunch of rocks and bring them back when they come home.

Hi Reddit!

As part of the Lunar Exploration Analogue Deployment (LEAD), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) partnered with the European Space Agency to conduct a series of field tests with the Juno rover to replicate scenarios of a lunar sample return mission. The location, a quarry, was slightly modified to emulate the lunar surface. In addition, to recreate the difficulty of long-distance communications, the rover was operated by teams based in Saint-Hubert (Quebec) and Germany.

We’re excited to answer your questions! N’hésitez pas à poser vos questions en français. Ask us about rover prototypes, wheels, mission replications, or the variety of scientific studies rovers can perform.

CSA experts answering your questions include:

• Pierre Allard (PA) Robotics engineer, specialized in ground control systems
• Chantelle Dubois (CD) Computer Engineer in the Engineer Development Program, former intern
• Sébastien Gemme (SG) Robotics engineer, specialized in software and computer vision
• David Gingras (DG) Robotics engineer, specialized in guidance, navigation and control
• Natasha Jackson (NJ) Robotics engineer, specialized in mechanical
• Tom Lamarche (TL) Robotics engineer, specialized in electronics
• Martin Picard (MP) Senior engineer, specialized in robotics

NOTE: Our experts will answer questions from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. ET!

Don’t forget to follow CSA rover news at https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/rovers/about.asp.

PROOF: https://twitter.com/csa_asc/status/1321806491704123392

EDIT: Clarified Chantelle's position EDIT 2: Clarified Natasha's position

Bonjour, Reddit!

Dans le cadre de la mission analogue d'exploration de la Lune (LEAD), l’Agence spatiale canadienne (ASC), en partenariat avec l’Agence spatiale européenne, a mené à l’aide du rover Juno une série d’essais sur le terrain visant à simuler une mission de retour d’échantillons lunaires. Les essais ont eu lieu dans une carrière légèrement modifiée de manière à imiter la surface lunaire. De plus, afin de reproduire les difficultés associées aux communications sur une grande distance, le rover a été commandé par des équipes établies à Saint-Hubert (Québec) et en Allemagne.

Nous sommes ravis de répondre à vos questions! Plusieurs sujets peuvent être couverts : les prototypes de rover, les roues, les simulations de missions ou les diverses études scientifiques que les rovers rendent possibles.

Voici les experts de l’ASC qui répondront à vos questions:

• Pierre Allard (PA) Ingénieur en ro

The landing site will be near Mons Rümker, a (relatively) young volcano on the Moon that last erupted late in the Moon's geological history, around 1 billion years ago. If everything goes well, the drill sample collected by Chang ' e 5 will be returned to Earth in a week or two's time. These samples are of huge scientific importance, as every other sample we've gotten back from the Moon (e.g by the Apollo program) are 3-4 billion years old, so these samples represent an as-of-yet unsampled period of the Moon's past.

Not much is known for sure about the landing time itself, but a leak on Chinese social media which has been corroborated by amateur radio astronomers suggests the landing will take place around 23:15 CST / 15:15 UTC / 10:15 EST

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any verified livestreams, although CGTN has promised 'live coverage'- unsure when that starts. This twitter account is worth tracking.

edit:

The spacecraft has successfully landed on the Moon, images and video are being recieved :)