A Tiny Reminder from Far, Far Away
At precisely 10:52 am (EDT) on Sunday, September 24, a small capsule parachuted to a landing on a U.S. government training range in the Utah desert near Salt Lake City. Nestled within were about 2 ounces of rock dust from the near-earth asteroid Bennu. The sample had been collected by the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission, which had been launched seven years earlier and had traveled 3.7 billion miles to complete this task. This astounding event got some minor news coverage, overtaken in column inches and cyber bytes by the impending Republican GOP Presidential Debate, NCAA football scores, the UAW strike and other “hot” topics. That’s a shame, since there’s more to learn from the OSIRIS-REx mission than a first glance and small news attention suggests.
Bennu was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago, contemporaneous with the birth of our Solar System. Because of that, scientists believe its essentially unchanged composition will enable the sample to help them understand that birth and reveal the source of organic compounds that could shed light on the origins of life on earth. Bennu is 1,600 feet wide, about the height of the Empire State Building. As a near-earth asteroid it has about a 1 in 2,700 chance of striking our planet but not for another 159 years, by which time what we learn about it and other experiments may help us know how to prevent such a disaster from it and other asteroids.
The cost of about $1 billion seems a lot in a nation that has so many other needs, but to put it in context, that’s about eight percent of the cost of the USS Ford aircraft carrier deployed last year. Still, that kind of comparison doesn’t get at what else we can learn from the OSIRIS-REx mission, and what we can also learn has far less to do with science than with ourselves.
In a time when cynicism, too often tinged with hatred, seems to suggest we can neither come together nor do much right, the Bennu mission is something to celebrate in a nation with too few unifying celebrations. It is, in fact, a national (actually a multinational) achievement – a collaboration of government agencies and employees, university researchers, private contractors and even third-grader Michael Puzio who named it in a contest in 2013.
The mission represents the reward of care, time and patience. The six years it has taken involved excessive analysis and study, preparation, multiple mid-course adjustments deep in space, no small amount of carefully calculated risk taking and the willingness to make an investment whose payoff was first a dream, then a hope and by no means a certainty. In that sense, the OSIRIS-REx mission is a useful metaphor for more earthly challenges.
The mission is clearly driven by a thirst for knowledge along with intellectual as well as practical humility. NASA scientists dubbed Bennu “the trickster” because of the twists, turns and confusion it has presented during the mission. This has clearly called for the acceptance of mistakes and the willingness to forgive them, lest the vast team working on the project come apart. It also serves as a metaphor for the value of persistence amidst adversity without which stellar achievements against significant odds are impossible.
Though we as lay people can’t know, it’s likely that six years of teamwork involved productive disagreement, dissent and consensus building – the companions of smart and dedicated people who speak their minds and tolerate others who do. NASA got it right this time, hopefully having draw upon the lessons learned about the lack of toleration of dissent which contributed to the tragic loss of both the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles and their crews.
Most of us are familiar with spacecraft landings, so we might assume that a “well done” to the OSIRIS-REx team is well-earned. But OSIRIS-REx is not done. The capsule it dropped through 63,000 feet to the earth’s surface did not end the “mother-ship’s” mission. That spacecraft is now on its way to Apophis, another near-earth asteroid – and a more dangerous one - that will pass within about 20,000 miles of Earth just six years from now. The quite literally “extra mileage” we’re getting out of OSIRS-REx is also a metaphor for the value of forward-thinking and planning.
OSIRIS-REx is a look both deep into our distant past and a gaze into our future. That extended time perspective is also something we should appreciate and make more use of in tackling the physical, cultural, social and political issues that face us. Bennu was an ancient Egyptian sun god, associated with both creation and rebirth. A good society, one certainly worth preserving from near-earth asteroids, understands its creation, history and what it takes to be continually reborn. As OSIRS-REx wings its way back into space and Bennu remains behind, they no doubt will be able to reveal more lessons to us and, hopefully, we’ll be alert for and open to them.
Photo Credit: NASA
