Nasa aims to grab asteroid time capsule

Nasa said it plans to launch the first unmanned US spacecraft to a deep space asteroid in 2016 to collect samples and return them to earth for further study.

Last year, Japan became the first nation to complete such a mission when its Hayabusa probe brought back dust following a seven-year trip to an asteroid 300 million kilometres from earth – about twice as far as the sun.

The American mission aims to collect a larger sample from a closer target in the hopes that generations of scientists will be able to study it and learn about the building blocks of life in deep space, Nasa scientists said. Whatever comes back in 2023 will be a “time capsule containing probably the building blocks of life,” said lead investigator on the project, Michael Drake, director of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The spacecraft, known as Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Ex-plorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will launch in 2016 and will then travel four years before it nears its target. The destination is a near earth asteroid known as 1999 RQ36, which made headlines last year when scientists predicted it could strike earth in the year 2182, a event classed at about a one-in-1,000 chance.

The asteroid, described as “potentially hazardous” by Nasa, passes within about 450,000 kilometres of earth’s orbit. After six months of surveying the terrain from a distance of five kilometres, Nasa scientists will choose a spot, activate the craft’s robotic arm, and pluck at least 60 grams of material to return to earth.

Or it may grab as much as two kilos, depending on the density of the soil on the asteroid, which cannot be determined until the probe nears. The samples are scheduled to arrive in 2023.