NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe successfully obtained samples from the main mission target of the Bennu asteroid in October 2020, and set off in May last year, returning to Earth by Bennu. If there are no surprises, OSIRIS-REx will approach Earth in September next year and drop the pod containing the sample towards Earth so that NASA scientists can retrieve it. But OSIRIS-REx itself will not return to Earth, which makes it possible for OSIRIS-REx to extend its mission later.
NASA earlier announced that after dropping the pod, the probe will begin its “second life”, heading to another asteroid, Apophis, under the name OSIRIS-APEX. Apophis is actually a fairly well-known asteroid. When it was first discovered in the early years, due to the uncertainty of its orbit, it was once calculated that there was a 2.7% chance of hitting the earth in 2029. Fortunately, subsequent calculations confirmed that Apophis had no risk of hitting the Earth at all, but it was still a fairly representative near-Earth asteroid.
The OSIRIS-APEX mission is expected to orbit Apophis for at least 18 months, after which it will gradually approach Apophis, as it did at Bennu, until it “blows” the asteroid’s surface with its jets, exposing the subsurface. soil and rock for research. The entire extended mission will add about $200 million to the cost of OSIRIS-REx, but considering that the entire mission has already spent $1.16 billion excluding the extension, a little more will be able to observe an additional asteroid, which should be quite earn it?