OSIRIS-REx Mission: Important Topics for UPSC Exams​

OSIRIS-REx Mission: Important Topics for UPSC Exams​

What?

• The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) is a NASA asteroid study and sample return mission launched in September 2016.
• OSIRIS-REx seeks answers to the questions that are central to the human experience: Where did we come from? What is our destiny?
• Asteroids, the leftover debris from the solar system formation process, can answer these questions and teach us about the history of the sun and planets.
• Mission : is to study asteroid 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid, and return a sample to Earth in 2023 for detailed analysis.

Why Bennu?

• Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans. Bennu is also one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, as it has a relatively high probability of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century.
• OSIRIS-REx will determine Bennu’s physical and chemical properties, which will be critical to know in the event of an impact mitigation mission.
• Finally, asteroids like Bennu contain natural resources such as water, organics, and precious metals.
• In the future, these asteroids may one day fuel the exploration of the solar system by robotic and manned spacecraft.

MISSION OBJECTIVES

• Return and analyze a sample of Bennu’s surface
• Map the asteroid
• Document the sample site
• Measure the orbit deviation caused by non-gravitational forces (the Yarkovsky effect)
• Compare observations at the asteroid to ground-based observations

It is the third planetary science mission selected in the New Frontiers program, after Juno and New Horizons.

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