Updates

The OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer and the MapCam color imager made detections of magnetite on Bennu’s surface, which bolsters earlier findings indicating the interaction of rock with liquid water on Bennu’s parent body.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, newly arrived at asteroid Bennu, has found strong spectral evidence that the asteroid’s rocks have undergone interactions with water at some point in their history. The evidence comes from two onboard spectrometers, one of them designed and built at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Shortly after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flew past Earth at a distance of about 11,000 miles on Sept. 22, an ASU-built spectrometer onboard looked at Earth and detected methane, ozone, carbon dioxide and water vapor. Taken together these gases in our atmosphere set Earth apart from other planets.

The OTES initial checkout has completed and all data/telemetry have been transmitted to the DSN. So far, we’ve received about 70% of the data from the DSN. We expect to have the remaining data later this evening. Initial assessment of the science data indicates nominal instrument performance….

Good news! OTES was successfully powered on and is operating nominally in its housekeeping mode. All instrument telemetry appears nominal. We will wait 3 hours for thermal equilibration before we start collecting our first checkout science data.

NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on September 8, 2016, and the spacecraft is now on its multi-million mile journey to asteroid Bennu.