Final Imaging Pass Complete, At Bennu -- Now OSIRIS-REx Will Fire Its Engines In May, To Head Home...

At the moment, the gracefully demure craft, now loaded with surface-, and sub-surface samples. . . is drifting slowly away from Bennu -- to a safely-distant position -- far enough away from the asteroid, so as not to preturb Bennu's microgravity-influenced orbital path, when it ultimately fires its powerful main engine, to head home. [All of that will wait until May 10, 2021 -- and be live televised by NASA-TV. We will cover it, right here.]

And so, every single bit of this mission has been a wild success, so far. All that remains (still a daunting task, to be sure -- traversing some 183,914,048 miles) is to get home, and gently drop the sample pack to the Earth's surface, by parachute. Excellent! Here's the latest from NASA / Goddard, this afternoon:

. . .NASA’s OSIRIS-REx completed its last flyover of Bennu around 6 a.m. EDT (4 a.m. MDT) April 7 and is now slowly drifting away from the asteroid. . . .

During the flyby, OSIRIS-REx imaged Bennu for 5.9 hours, covering more than a full rotation of the asteroid. It flew within 2.1 miles’ (3.5 kilometers) distance to the surface of Bennu – the closest it’s been since the TAG sample collection event. It will take until at least April 13 for OSIRIS-REx to downlink all of the data and new pictures of Bennu’s surface recorded during the flyby. . . .

OSIRIS-REx, with its pristine and precious asteroid cargo, will remain in the vicinity of Bennu until May 10 when it will fire its thrusters and begin its two-year cruise home. The mission will deliver the asteroid sample to Earth Sept. 24, 2023. . . .

We will be eagerly looking forward to that evening, to be certain. Be excellent to one another, as Spring is fully here, now. . . smile.

नमस्ते