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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Capsule Secured in Utah Clean Room
NASA Official Mission Blog ^ | Sept 24 2023 | Lonnie Shekhtman

Posted on 09/24/2023 4:55:24 PM PDT by texas booster

oom

At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down.

Once the helicopter line was detached and the helicopter had departed, the clean room team removed the capsule from its metal transport cradle. They loaded the capsule onto a cart and wheeled it into the hangar where a temporary clean room had been set up. In the hangar, the capsule was fully unwrapped and cleaned, and then taken into the clean room for disassembly.   

To protect the clean room from contaminants, only six people are allowed inside. Covered from head to toe in bunny suits, hoods, nitrile gloves, shoe covers, plus hair and beard covers, their job is to disassemble the capsule and remove the unopened sample canister inside. They will package all the parts for transport by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday morning.

As soon as the disassembly team opens the capsule and removes several components, exposing the unopened sample canister, the plan is to connect the canister to a continuous flow of nitrogen, which will be monitored every hour. Nitrogen is an inert gas that will protect the Bennu sample from oxygen, moisture, and other contaminants; NASA has used nitrogen to protect space samples since the Apollo era.

If clean room staff find loose asteroid particles inside the capsule, they will collect them and place them in aluminum cups for transfer to Johnson.

The disassembly and packaging process is expected to last about five hours, with a clean room technician documenting the process for NASA’s history records.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Utah
KEYWORDS: 101955bennu; andromedastrain; asteroid; asteroidbennu; asteroids; astronomy; bennu; nasa; osiris; osirisrex; science; space
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About the OSIRIS-REx Mission NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, will return to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, with material from asteroid Bennu. When it arrives, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release the sample capsule for a safe landing in the Utah desert. The pristine material from Bennu – rocks and dust collected from the asteroid’s surface in 2020 – will offer generations of scientists a window into the time when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago. Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission.
1 posted on 09/24/2023 4:55:24 PM PDT by texas booster
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To: texas booster

Sounds like the Andromeda Strain.


2 posted on 09/24/2023 4:57:31 PM PDT by rigelkentaurus
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To: texas booster
Not politics and not sports related.

The sample from the OSIRIS-REx landed in Utah and is not being prepared for transport to Houston.

A detailed view of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule. The capsule weighs about 100 pounds and is the size of a large truck tire. Credit: Lockheed Martin Space.

3 posted on 09/24/2023 4:57:32 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster
A capsule with a sample of asteroid Bennu inside, delivered to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is seen shortly after touching down on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Photo Credit: Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber.


4 posted on 09/24/2023 4:59:07 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

Let’s all just get ready for......anything....

https://monstermoviemusic.blogspot.com/2014/05/fantastic-universal-monster-run-from.html


5 posted on 09/24/2023 4:59:37 PM PDT by frank ballenger (You have summoned up a thundercloud. You're gonna hear from me. Anthem by Leonard Cohen)
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To: texas booster

This is cool as hell


6 posted on 09/24/2023 5:02:52 PM PDT by bigbob (Q)
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To: texas booster

So...it begins...


7 posted on 09/24/2023 5:02:59 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: frank ballenger

https://www.google.com/search?q=voyage+to+the+bottom+of+the+sea+monster+escapes+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiektfDucSBAxX8wckDHW5BC4wQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=voyage+to+the+bottom+of+the+sea+monst


8 posted on 09/24/2023 5:03:52 PM PDT by frank ballenger (You have summoned up a thundercloud. You're gonna hear from me. Anthem by Leonard Cohen)
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To: texas booster

Thanks for the heads up. Killer pictures. Appreciated.


9 posted on 09/24/2023 5:15:01 PM PDT by cabojoe ( 🇺🇸 Stop Ukie censorship. Release Gonzalo Lira)
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To: rigelkentaurus

Seen on screens:
ATTEMPT NO LANDING ON BENNU. REPEAT. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LAND ON BENNU.

EUROPA, BENNU - DAMN AUTOCORRECT!


10 posted on 09/24/2023 5:15:30 PM PDT by 17th Miss Regt ( )
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To: texas booster

https://archive.org/details/the-andromeda-strain-1971


11 posted on 09/24/2023 5:40:46 PM PDT by hiho hiho
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To: rigelkentaurus

Pick it up

Hell no! You pick it up!

12 posted on 09/24/2023 5:44:31 PM PDT by Magnum44 (...against all enemies, foreign and domestic... )
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To: texas booster

Drama builds!
Is it like the mysterious Blue Ice that falls from aircraft lavatories?
I have low expectations that there is anything very special about what they find.
But I have high expectations that details will be dribbled out and used as justification for BILLION$ of new spending. After all, “this will likely result in the cure for [* save this space for a horrible disease *].”


13 posted on 09/24/2023 5:49:51 PM PDT by Honest Nigerian
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To: hiho hiho

Of course “The Andromeda Strain” (2008 miniseries) had to have a gay character in it. Neither the book or original movie had one but they’re somehow needed these days.


14 posted on 09/24/2023 6:00:38 PM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult (I stayed drug - free going on 64 years for this?)
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To: texas booster

“ Nitrogen is an inert gas… “

WRONG ——-

Nitrogen is NOT inert.
Nitrogen is a very active element.
It is an atom in the molecules of most explosives.


15 posted on 09/24/2023 6:10:41 PM PDT by Reynoldo (BurnLootMurde)
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To: Hillarys Gate Cult

Well, they made Dr. Peter Leavitt in the book a woman to make the cast ‘more diverse’ for the movie in ‘71.

It’s just Hollyweird.


16 posted on 09/24/2023 6:11:27 PM PDT by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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To: texas booster; Chode; SkyDancer; Salamander; Carriage Hill; Lockbox; MtnClimber; nascarnation; ...

They used a Helicopter to move that little pissant thing ?!?!?!

}{€££ a Flog Cart could have done that as the fuel is whole lot cheaper.


17 posted on 09/24/2023 6:20:49 PM PDT by mabarker1 ( (Congress- the opposite of PROGRESS!!! A fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I'm a member of Congress!!!)
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To: texas booster

So... NASA has a team of engineers and scientists that can launch a rocket from earth, launch a probe from the rocket, land on a meteor half a billion miles away moving at 50,000 miles an hour, take off from the meteor, return to earth, drop a package in the desert, but STILL fail their number one mission;

Making Muslims feel good about themselves.....

(Remember the project engineer who was forced to publicly flagellate himself for the successful Rosetta mission because ehe wore a bikini girl shirt (a woman gave him)?)


18 posted on 09/24/2023 6:22:50 PM PDT by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: Reynoldo
Gaseous N2 is very inert.
19 posted on 09/24/2023 6:24:42 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: rigelkentaurus

IKR im going to watch that tonight


20 posted on 09/24/2023 6:38:52 PM PDT by al baby (I know its the way the measure the cooling capability )
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