Winnipeg geologist to help NASA asteroid mission find ideal sampling spots

A Winnipeg geologist has set his sights on an asteroid that could hold answers about the origins of our solar system and life on Earth.

Ed Cloutis, a professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg, is part of a team that will pick the right spot for NASA's OSIRIS-REx unmanned spacecraft to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu to bring back to Earth.

"It's about 500 metres across, so kind of from CBC's studios out to [about] Portage Avenue. So it's big but not huge; you could easily walk around it in less than an hour," Cloutis said of the asteroid during an interview Tuesday.

"It's a big space rock but not a huge space rock."

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The OSIRIS-REx, or the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida as early as Thursday, embarking on a seven-year round-trip journey to map the asteroid and ultimately "vacuum" particles from its surface.

"It is going to do what we call a 'touch and go' manoeuvre, so it's not going to land like the Rosetta lander tried to land on the comet. It's going to touch down on the asteroid … kind of vacuum or Hoover up some material and then depart the asteroid with the sample," Cloutis explained.

Some of what is collected from Bennu — researchers are aiming for at least 57 grams — is expected to be studied in Canadian laboratories once the spacecraft returns to Earth in the year 2023, and Cloutis said he hopes to get his hands on some of that material.

Cloutis said he expects to see a "mix of dust and sand-sized particles and probably pebbles," adding that the sampling instrument on board the spacecraft can only collect particles smaller than two centimetres in size.

A year in orbit

OSIRIS-REx will spend about a year or 1½ years in orbit, mapping the surface of the asteroid, before Cloutis and the rest of the team select ideal locations for the spacecraft to collect a sample.

"The plan is to sort of map it in exquisite detail, use a variety of instruments that are on the spacecraft, to try to determine how geologically homogeneous or heterogeneous it is," he said.

"We're going to map the asteroid, try to identify areas that can be sampled, and then we're going to prioritize those areas based on what we call the science value."

Cloutis said the samples from Bennu could help researchers address the origins of the solar system and where the Earth may have gotten its water.

"This asteroid's of interest to us because it's a class of asteroid called the carbonaceous chondrite, which means it contains organic molecules and a lot of carbon," he said.

"Our interest in this class of asteroids is that they probably have different kinds of organic molecules, and so this can give us some insights into the kind of materials that might have fallen onto the Earth back in the day that may have helped life arise on the Earth."

The mission marks the first time Canada is participating in an international mission to bring an asteroid sample to Earth. In addition to the University of Winnipeg, researchers from York University, the University of Calgary, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia are taking part.