How to watch the NASA mission landing in Utah on Sunday

SALT LAKE CITY — A director at NASA invited Utahns to watch the asteroid sample mission landing in the Utah desert this Sunday, and shared information about other upcoming missions, at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City Thursday.

Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, came from the NASA headquarters in Washington to oversee the OSIRIS-REx mission landing in the Utah desert on Sunday. The mission represents NASA's first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, Bennu — the largest sample to come to Earth — and will help scientists understand the origin of life in the universe.

"The samples that will land in your backyard on Sunday are priceless," Glaze told members of the public, and local school groups, during Thursday's presentation. "I think this is going to be a pretty phenomenal event. This is a one-of-a-kind, unique sample that our scientists are going to study today that will also be useful for scientists for many decades to come."

Caisa Brown, of South Jordan, pulled her science-obsessed twin sons, McKay and Crew, 11, out of school to meet Glaze.

"This was a fun extra learning experience for them," Brown said. "It's really cool that the planetarium did this for the kids, and to bring it to life for them."

"I love science," McKay said. "I want to work with NASA when I'm older."

"It was super duper cool," Crew said of meeting Glaze. He was impressed that she helped with the Mars Rover, and said he is excited to have the sample landing in his home state this weekend.

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About OSIRIS-REx

The OSIRIS-REx mission has been in the works for 20 years, with the mission aircraft in space for the past seven years. The aircraft containing the capsule used to collect the asteroid sample launched from Cape Canaveral on Sept. 8, 2016. It reached Bennu in December 2018 and left with a sample in May 2021.

Bennu, discovered in 1999, is about 500 meters in diameter. In comparison, the Empire State Building is 443 meters tall. The asteroid was chosen to study because it is rich in carbon, meaning it could help NASA scientists better understand the chemical building blocks of life. Bennu also crosses Earth's orbital path every few years, making it accessible to study, and meaning that it has a small chance of hitting Earth in the next century.

The sample return capsule will land in the middle of a 37-mile by 9-mile ellipse on Department of Defense property at the Utah Test and Training Range west of Dugway, on Sunday at 8:55 a.m. The capsule is the size of a large car tire, weighs approximately 110 pounds and is covered in a cork-based thermal material to protect the sample from heat.

Glaze emphasized that Utahns should be proud to be involved in the mission, and encouraged them to watch the landing. Anyone interested in watching the live broadcast can tune in to the NASA livestream or its virtual guest program, starting at 8 a.m. on Sunday.

"This is an amazing thing that's going to be influencing science for decades and decades to come, and the fact that Utah and Utahns have a critical role — we have to land these samples somewhere safe, and this is a great place to do that," Glaze said.

Local contributors to the OSIRIS-REx mission include Utah State University in Logan, LACO Technologies in Salt Lake City and the Mission Control Center at Hill Air Force Base.

About 20 minutes after the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft releases the sample return capsule on Sunday, the spacecraft will set off on a new mission to explore the asteroid Apophis, on the OSIRIS-APEX mission. It is scheduled to reach Apophis in 2029.

'Asteroid Autumn'

The OSIRIS-REx mission is the first event kicking off NASA's "Asteroid Autumn" as the organization launches and celebrates several missions to learn more about asteroids, Glaze said.

The next event happening this fall is the Psyche mission launching on Oct. 5, which will allow NASA to explore an asteroid of the same name, Psyche, to learn more about the origins of the solar system. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Psyche in 2029, orbiting it for at least 26 months.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft, on a 12-year tour of the Trojan asteroid belt in Jupiter's orbit, is also set to approach the asteroid Dinkinesh on Nov. 1. This is the first mission to explore the Trojan asteroid belt, and will provide a test of NASA spacecraft systems to make sure they have the operational capacity to conduct other high-speed asteroid missions.

This Sept. 26 also marks the one-year anniversary of NASA's DART spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos last fall and altering the orbit of the asteroid. Glaze said this will prove useful if NASA needs to alter the orbit of other asteroids in the future to keep them from hitting Earth.

Part of why NASA studies asteroids is to determine which ones pose a danger to Earth. Glaze said an average of two asteroids come between Earth and the moon every week, but most of them burn up in the atmosphere.

Bennu, for example, has a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting Earth over the next couple of centuries, and scientists say not to worry about it too much.

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