As promised here’s the link to the live-feed. You can also watch it on NASA-TV, I believe.
5 p.m. EDT – Live coverage of OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touch-and-go (TAG) maneuver to collect a sample on asteroid Bennu
Wow. Today is THE day — NASA's first attempt to collect a piece of an asteroid. I'm feeling ready to get that sample! How are you all feeling? ? pic.twitter.com/a06Iejngo2
— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) October 20, 2020
The OSIRIS-REx team uplinked the final GO commands for the sample collection sequence to me this morning. Around 1:45 pm EDT I'll leave orbit and start my journey #ToBennuAndBack – follow along here!
— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) October 20, 2020
Its official website has some cool interactive stuff here.
1:20 to 6:30 p.m. EDT – Live stream animation displaying OSIRIS-REx’s sample collection activities in real time. The animation commences with the spacecraft’s slew into position for the Orbit Departure Maneuver and runs through the entire sequence of TAG events, concluding after the spacecraft’s back-away burn. Event will be broadcast on the mission’s website.
5 to 6:30 p.m. – Live broadcast from Lockheed Martin of OSIRIS-REx’s descent to the surface of Bennu and attempt at sample collection.
Hosted by Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, and Michelle Thaller, science communicator at Goddard, the broadcast will cover milestones in the last 90 minutes leading up to TAG and spacecraft back-away. It will include perspectives from team members and science leaders about the mission’s challenges and accomplishments.
A clean feed of the Mission Support Area during TAG is planned to run on NASA’s media channel.
cope did a great run down here:
Re: OSIRIS-REx and Bennu, it’s also being covered on NASA TV online or in your cable package if you have it. The TV feed will include a briefing at 3:00 EDT followed by coverage of the smash and grab of Bennu beginning at 5:00 EST. A tricky set of maneuvers has been pre-programmed into the spacecraft as the radio wave travel time one way to OSIRIS-REx is about 18 minutes so no live control of the intrepid robot explorer is possible.
Also, too, they won’t know for about 10 days if they managed to gather up any of Bennu’s surface materials. This will be determined by measuring the mass of OSIRIS-REx. The sample collection mass goals range from a couple of ounces to a couple of pounds.
There won’t be live pics from the process but images should give a good idea if everything went well. There is a secondary collection site if there is an abort of today’s attempt or failure to gather up sufficient samples.
I have followed the exploration of space since I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s. I remember waiting anxiously for copies of National Geographic or Scientific American to come out with pictures from various Ranger, Pioneer, Mercury and Gemini, missions. Now, I’ll be watching mission control coverage of this ambitious program live from my home. What times we live in…
It sparks the imagination, doesn’t it? What are your favorite NASA/Space Exploration stories? I have a deep fondness for the Mars Curiosity Rover because it landed on my birthday.
NotMax
Still harbor an undercurrent of disappointment that the twin Mars rovers weren’t named Lewis and Clark, especially as they launched during the centennial year of the start of the L&C expedition.
;)
Matt McIrvin
When I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, I followed the Viking and Voyager missions in National Geographic World and Star & Sky magazine–I was absolutely riveted. I don’t understand the people who disdain any automated space exploration that doesn’t involve astronaut boots on the ground as void of poetry or inspiration, because I know they inspired me.
Viking 1 landed on Mars on July 20, 1976, seven years to the day after the Apollo 11 landing (it was originally planned for July 4, for Bicentennial symbolism, but the schedule shifted for some reason I don’t recall). I remember watching the news updates that broke into regular programming that morning and eventually showed the first photo, a black-and-white image of the soil and rocks around the lander’s footpad. The imaging system on the Vikings was, in principle, more like a flatbed scanner than a camera, and the image built itself up slowly in vertical stripes as the data streamed in.
The feed had interrupted Captain Kangaroo, and my sister was upset about that. “It’s just a picture of rocks! Why did they break into Captain Kangaroo for rocks?”
Wag
My favorite NASA mission of all time is Hubble. So many years of mind blowing photos.
debbie
@NotMax:
Naw. I love their names. So aspirational. Go, little Perseverance, go!
Ken
I love all the Mars rovers. I hope someday they’re recovered and put in a museum, preferably on Mars, as a proper memorial. And here’s XKCD’s takes on Spirit, Opportunity (1), Opportunity (2), and Curiosity.
This invites an XKCD where OSIRIS-REx overperforms and drags the whole asteroid back to Earth.
HeartlandLiberal
I still remember staying up and watching the live feed of the first steps on the moon. I was already married, attending Birmingham-Southern College, and we already had an infant son. We were dirt poor, and living in a converted WWII army barracks on the west edge of campus, converted to eight married student apartments. Rent was $40 a month, which was hard to beat. I had just graduated, and we were preparing to leave Alabama for graduate school in Urbana, Illinois. It was one of the most exciting moments we have ever experienced, because it represented so much of what the human race can do if it puts its mind to it.
Barbara J
I went to a gathering at Cornell on the night that Curiosity landed on Mars. The Astronomy department had invited community members to watch a live feed they had into the Mission Control at JPL. (Cornell scientists were involved in Curiosity’s development.) It was late on a Sunday night, if I remember correctly, and it was scheduled in a large lecture hall and only a few people were there when we arrived about 20 minutes early. I was a little disappointed, but I figured that since it was late (maybe 10ish, I think) not too may people would show up. Well, little by little the room started filling up and by the time the program started it was packed to the hilt. No standing room, with lots of excited nerds hanging on every word. In between snippets of the mission managers, they showed animated films of just how the landing would work.
And when that rover landed safely the room erupted in a happy roar that was amazing. So, as you can guess, Curiosity has a soft spot in my heart.
Mudbrush
I was amazed by those photos that the New Horizons probe took of Pluto, showing that giant heart shaped ice field on it’s surface. I mean, we got to see the face of Pluto! Can you imagine? Then it went on to photograph an object even farther out that looked like a sooty snowman! If only Clyde Tombaugh had lived long enough to see such wonders…
Betty
Every time one of these missions succeed, it is thrilling. We are capable of great accomplishments if we get out of our own way.
cope
Thanks for the shout out, TaMara. I didn’t get into it in the earlier post but the way they will detect the mass of collected material is rather ingenuous.
Last week, the Sample Return Capsule (SRC), the relatively small part of the space craft that will be jettisoned to return to Earth was exposed to the Sun and baked clean of any accumulated condensation. Then, there was a spin up of OSIRIS-REx with the empty, baked SRC during which its moment of inertia was determined. I am making a big assumption that the Doppler shift of radio signals during this spin was used to make that measurement and I could easily be totally off base so somebody please correct me if that is not correct.
Anyway, some days after the sample collection process, it will spin up again and any change in the moment of inertia will be due to the increased measurable mass of the collected material. Newton was amazing.
cope
@Mudbrush: Did you know a small container of his ashes is attached to New Horizons?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=628
frosty
For me it was Apollo 8 and the picture of the Earth over the moonscape. Which IIRC ended up as the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog.
debbie
@Barbara J:
If only NASA would engineer our appliances. They’d last far beyond their warranties!
NotMax
@debbie
Few would be willing to lay out $800 million for a toaster oven, though.
:)
TaMara (HFG)
@cope: You can send up a flare to me anytime there is something fun to cover!
cope
@TaMara (HFG): I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. We all need more fun and I have been pretty derelict about seeking it out the past four years or so.