Space News for October 2023: OSIRIS-Rex, the Parker Solar Probe and Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon all making news.

The big news in space this month is the return of the OSIRIS-Rex probe from its seven-year long mission to the asteroid Bennu, see my posts of 21 October 2020 and 1 May 2021. During the probe’s more than yearlong study of the asteroid in October of 2020 the spacecraft made a pogo stick style bounce off of Bennu that succeeded in collecting an estimated 250 grams of the asteroid’s material. Once the spacecraft had gathered its precious cargo it ignited its rockets once more for the three-year journey back home.

Artist’s impression of the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft’s touch and go collection of a sample of the asteroid Bennu. (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)

On September 24th, as the school bus sized main probe passed by the Earth it dropped off a suitcase sized capsule that entered our atmosphere at around 8:40 AM Mountain Daylight Time. The capsule’s descent, including both drogue and main parachute deployment, were flawless and at 8:53 MDT the capsule landed at the US Army’s Proving Ground in Utah and within 30 minutes a NASA recovery team was on the spot and the capsule secured.

The re-entry capsule containing the sample collected by OSIRIS-Rex at Bennu as it was recovered in the Utah desert. (Credit: Flickr)

Taking the utmost care to prevent the capsule’s precious contents from becoming contaminated by anything of this Earth, the NASA personnel took it to a small, especially prepared clean room at the Army base. There the capsule underwent more procedures designed to prevent contamination in order to prepare it for its plane ride to the Johnson Space Center at Houston.

In order to prevent contamination of the material from Bennu the sample collected by OSIRIS-Rex was placed in this chamber which was itself inside a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. (Credit: NASA Blogs)

That plane ride took place the very next day and now the samples of asteroid dirt are in Texas undergoing their initial evaluation. A public announcement of the results of those initial tests took place later in the month. In the years to come scientists all over the world will have their chance to study some of the material brought back from Bennu in the hopes of learning clues as to how our Solar system came into being as well as how some of the chemicals of life, basically carbon and water, came to our Earth.

NASA bigwigs discussing the initial results of the sample brought back by OSIRIS-Rex. The big news is that they collected a lot more material than they ever expected. (Credit: Ariziona Daily Star)

O’k so the capsule contained material from Bennu landed safely back here on Earth but what about the main OSIRIS-Rex space probe, what’s going to happen to it? Well, it’s still out there, after dropping off the capsule it fired it engines again and is now on it’s way to another asteroid, one named Apophis which the probe is scheduled to reach in 2029. By the by, that same year Apophis will also pass by our planet at one tenth the distance of the Moon.

The OSIRIS-Rex sample collection maneuver was so successful that some material didn’t get inside the container, see left center of image. NASA scientists are still glad to have it and will catalog everything before actually opening the main container to see what all’s inside. (Credit: Popular Mechanics)

Another NASA interplanetary probe has also been making some dramatic headlines is the Parker Solar Probe which continues to adjust it orbit taking it closer and ever closer to the Sun, see my posts of 7 June 2017 and 18 December 2019. Now just getting to the Sun is dangerous enough, its surface temperature is over 5,000º C after all and last year in September of 2022 the hazards of getting too close to the Sun increased dramatically.

In order to protect itself from the Sun’s heat the Parker Solar Probe has a very sophisticated Heat Shield. (Credit: Phys.org)

You see the Sun can be quite violent at times, remember it is really a million and a half kilometer wide hydrogen bomb that’s been going off for over 4 billion years now. Explosions on the Sun’s surface are common and can result in what are called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that can hurl billions of tons of plasma away from the Sun. And the closer you get to the Sun the more likely it is that sooner or later you’ll get hit by a CME.

A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) larger than the Sun itself. Such explosions are really very common and can cause considerable damage to our modern electronics based society. (Credit: EarthSky)

That’s exactly what happened to the Parker Solar probe last September. In fact that CME was one of the most powerful ever observed. Well protected by its massive heat shield Parker not only survived the two day long ordeal but the probe actually succeeded in filming the CME as it went by. You can watch that video by clicking on the link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF_e5eYgJ3Y

The Sun’s eleven year sunspot cycle is expected to peak in 2025 or 26 and the Parker probe’s trajectory was designed so that it will make its closest approaches at just that time. So Parker will almost certainly encounter even more violent CMEs in the years to come. It’s important to learn all that we can about these powerful events because as our society grows ever more dependent on electrical power and electronics in general the threat of a CME striking our planet and causing massive damage to our infrastructure grows as well.

Just some of the many ways that a CME can cause damage here on Earth. (credit: Hindustan Times)

While the Parker Solar Probe faces extraordinary hazards as it gets ever closer to the Sun space is a dangerous place for any spacecraft. That danger was illustrated by what appears to be the fate of India’s Chandrayaan 3 probe that landed at the Moon’s south polar region just last month.

The Moon isn’t a comfortable place to live either. The Chandrayaan 3 probe and its rover had to endure the long Lunar day where temperatures can reach 200 degrees C but the equally severe Lunar night seems to have been too much for them. (Credit: NDTV)

The success of Chandrayaan 3 made India only the fourth nation to land a probe on the Lunar surface and the first to land near the south pole where it is hoped water ice may be hidden at the bottom of some craters, see my post of 9 September 2023. Chandrayaan landed at the start of the two week long lunar day, sending back priceless data on conditions at the South Pole. Chandrayaan even deployed a small rover vehicle that puttered around the main lander making further measurements.

The Chandrayaan 3 lander as photographed by its rover. (Credit: Space.com)

At the end of the lunar day both the rover and the main lander were ordered to go into a sleep mode for the two week long lunar night during which time the probe’s solar cells would not be able to generate power and the outside temperature could drop to well below -200º C. Even doing so there was no guarantee that either the lander or rover would survive the ordeal.

Hoping to survive the harsh Lunar night the Indian engineers put both Chandrayaan 3 and its rover into a sleep mode. It doesn’t appear to have worked. (Credit: YouTube)

At the moment it appears Chandrayaan 3 has not survived. Engineers at the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) report that they have not received any signals from the spacecraft and hopes are diminishing that it will revive. Nevertheless Chandrayaan’s mission was a success, a success that told us a great deal about our Moon’s south polar region.

Is there ice at the Moon’s South Pole. If there is then that’s where the first long term human habitation of our satellite will begin. (Credit: SOEST Hawaii)

The knowledge sent back to Earth by missions like OSIRIS-Rex, Parker and Chandrayaan make taking the risks of those missions well worth the effort.