The OSIRIS-REx mission team screened the spacecraft’s path well ahead of time for any satellites or pieces of space debris to make sure there would be no close conjunction with any resident object in Earth orbit. The spacecraft will rise above Geostationary Altitude at 18:11 UTC and make its closest approach to the Moon around ten hours after the flyby, coming no closer than 265,500 Kilometers. OSIRIS-REx dips below the Geostationary Orbit altitude at 15:32 UTC and communications will be lost for up to 55 minutes as the spacecraft fades below the horizon as seen from the Deep Space Network Station in Canberra, Australia around 16:45 UTC and the signal is re-acquired by Goldstone, California at 17:40 UTC. Earth Gravity Assist Ground Track – Image: NASA Closest approach occurs on Friday, September 22 at 16:51:45 UTC at an altitude of 17,237 Kilometers over Antarctica, due south of Cape Horn, at a relative speed of 30,670 Kilometers per hour. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived back in Earth’s Hill Sphere on September 19 where Earth represents the primary gravitational force acting on the vehicle, altering its course. No Trojans were discovered, but the experiment proved MapCam’s sensitivity as a number of faint main belt asteroids were detected by the instrument. While coasting in its orbit around the sun, OSIRIS-REx went through a number of testing activities on its instruments and ten days in February were used to point the craft’s Mapping Camera toward the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 4 to look for Trojan asteroids – bodies captured at the L4 point and traveling around the sun ahead of Earth.
The spacecraft made a 2.6-meter-per-second clean-up maneuver on January 18 to fine-tune its trajectory and a precise course correction on August 23 used the craft’s Attitude Control System for a 77-second burn to change speed by 0.48 meters per second as a final setup maneuver for the flyby.Įarth Gravity Assist Trajectory – Image: NASA OSIRIS-REx completed a major Deep Space Maneuver on Decemto change course toward its Earth gravity assist, firing the main engines to change its speed by 431 meters per second. Placed into a solar orbit of 0.78 x 1.23 Astronomical Units, inclined 0.2°, OSIRIS-REx was set for one year of mostly quiet cruising ahead of its re-rendezvous with planet Earth. The Lockheed-built OSIRIS-REx spacecraft departed Earth atop an Atlas V rocket on Septem– lifting off from Florida’s Space Coast and receiving a smooth ride on the two-stage rocket that accelerated it beyond Earth’s gravitational grasp. OSIRIS-REx Roadmap to Bennu – Image: NASA/University of Arizona
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