A Look Through Time with NASA’s Lead Photographer for the James Webb Space Telescope

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A Look Through Time with NASA’s Lead Photographer for the James Webb Space Telescope

Nearly two years ago in the early morning hours of Dec. 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope successfully took flight from the jungle-encircled ELA-3 launch complex at Europe’s Spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana. Following a successful deployment in space, and the precise alignment of the telescope’s mirrors and instruments, Webb began science operations nearly six months after liftoff. As the two-year anniversary of the launch aboard ESA’s (European Space Agency) Ariane 5 rocket approaches, Webb’s lead photographer Chris Gunn has remastered a selection of his favorite images from his career, including one previously unreleased image. 

The opportunity to be the visual spokesperson for a mission of this magnitude was the experience of a lifetime

Chris GUNN

NASA/GSFC Lead Photographer for Webb Telescope

Since the fall of 2009, Gunn has routinely worked through holidays and weekends, and has spent much of these years on the road, ensuring that the Webb telescope’s progress is visually chronicled and shared with the world. As the various parts and components of Webb began to be assembled and tested throughout the country, Gunn and his camera followed along, capturing the historic development of NASA’s premier space telescope. Though Gunn’s images display the complex nature of the telescope aesthetically, these images also serve as critical engineering bookmarks that the team routinely relied on to document that Webb’s construction was sound before launch.   

Following the launch of Webb, Gunn is now chronicling NASA’s next flagship space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

All images below, credit NASA/Chris Gunn.  

Traveling alongside Webb as it grew and evolved, and to be able to add my signature to each photograph captured, was of course an honor, but also an immense challenge. With each image, I wanted to express the awe that I felt seeing Webb integrated right before my eyes, knowing that it was destined to shed new light on the mysteries of the cosmos.

CHRIS GUNN

NASA/GSFC Lead Photographer for Webb Telescope

To capture Webb in its true beauty, I employed the use of specialized lighting rigs, often setting up lights early before the start of work. Johnson Space Center’s Chamber A was an especially tough subject to shoot once Webb was inside. It required remote lights that had to be adjusted perfectly before I boarded a boom lift to make the photograph from seven stories up. It was all worth it, everyone’s hard work – just look at how well our starship is performing

Chris Gunn

NASA/GSFC Lead Photographer for Webb Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

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Media Contacts

Thaddeus Cesari Thaddeus.cesari@nasa.gov, Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro– rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s  Goddard Space Flight Center, , Greenbelt, Md.

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Meet the Infrared Telescopes That Paved the Way for NASA’s Webb

The Webb telescope has opened a new window onto the universe, but it builds on missions going back 40 years, including Spitzer and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite.

On Dec. 25, NASA will celebrate the two-year launch anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope – the largest and most powerful space observatory in history. The clarity of its images has inspired the world, and scientists are just beginning to explore the scientific bounty it is returning.

Webb’s success builds on four decades of space telescopes that also detect infrared light (which is invisible to the naked eye) – in particular the work of two retired NASA telescopes with big anniversaries this past year: January marked the 40th year since the launch of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), while August marked the 20th launch anniversary of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

This heritage shines through in NASA’s images of Rho Ophiuchi, one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. IRAS was the first infrared telescope ever launched into Earth orbit, above the atmosphere that blocks most infrared wavelengths. Rho Ophiuchi’s thick clouds of gas and dust block visible light, but IRAS’ infrared vision made it the first observatory to be able to pierce those layers to reveal newborn stars nestled deep inside.

Twenty years later, Spitzer’s multiple infrared detectors helped astronomers assign more specific ages to many of the stars in the region, providing insights about how young stars throughout the universe evolve. Webb’s even more detailed infrared view shows jets bursting from young stars, as well as disks of material around them – the makings of future planetary systems.

Another example is Fomalhaut, a star surrounded by a disk of debris similar to our asteroid belt. Forty years ago, the disk was one of IRAS’ major discoveries because it also strongly suggested the presence of at least one planet, at a time when no planets had yet been found outside the solar system. Subsequent observations by Spitzer showed the disk had two sections – a cold, outer region and a warm, inner region – and revealed more evidence of the presence of planets.

Many other telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have since studied Fomalhaut, and earlier this year, images from Webb gave scientists their clearest view of the disk structure yet. It revealed two previously unseen rings of rock and gas in the inner disk. Combining the work of generations of telescopes is bringing the story of Fomalhaut into sharp relief.

Visionary Infrared Astronomy Survey

When IRAS launched in 1983, scientists weren’t sure what the mission would reveal. They couldn’t predict that infrared would eventually be used in almost every area of astronomy, including studies of the evolution of galaxies, the life cycle of stars, the source of pervasive cosmic dust, the atmospheres of exoplanets, the movements of asteroids and other near-Earth objects, and even the nature of one of the biggest cosmological mysteries in history, dark energy.

IRAS set the stage for the European-led Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and the Herschel Space Observatory; the Japanese-led AKARI satellite; NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and the agency’s airborne SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), as well as many balloon-lofted observatories.

“Infrared light is essential for understanding where we came from and how we got here, on both the biggest and smallest astrophysical scales,” said Michael Werner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Werner, who specializes in infrared observations, served as project scientist for Spitzer. “We use infrared to look back in space and time, to help us understand how the modern universe came to be. And infrared enables us to study the formation and evolution of stars and planets, which tells us about the history of our own solar system.”

On to Spitzer

If IRAS was a pathfinding mission, Spitzer was designed to dive deep into the infrared universe. Many of Webb’s planetary targets in its first year had already been studied with Spitzer, which pursued a broad range of science goals, thanks to its wide field of view and relatively high resolution. During its 16-year mission, Spitzer uncovered new wonders from the edge of the universe (including some of the most distant galaxies ever observed at the time) to our own solar system (such as a new ring around Saturn). Researchers were also surprised to find that the telescope was a perfect tool for studying exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system), something they hadn’t expected when building it.

“With any telescope, you’re not just taking data for the sake of it; you’re asking a particular question or a series of questions,” said Sean Carey, a former manager for the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC, a data and science processing center at Caltech. “The questions we’re able to ask with Webb are much more complex and varied because of the knowledge we acquired with telescopes like Spitzer and IRAS.”

For example, Carey said, “We studied exoplanets with Spitzer and Hubble, and we figured out what you can do with an infrared telescope in that field, what types of planets are most interesting, and what you can learn about them. So when Webb launched, we jumped into exoplanet studies right from the get-go.”

Webb, too, is paving the way for future infrared missions. NASA’s upcoming SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission as well as the agency’s next flagship observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will continue to explore the universe in infrared.

More About the Missions

IRAS was a joint project of NASA, the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes, and the United Kingdom’s Science and Engineering Research Council. The mission was managed for NASA by JPL. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about IRAS, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/infrared-astronomical-satellite-iras

JPL managed the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington until the mission was retired in January 2020. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive operated by IPAC at Caltech.

For more information about Spitzer, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

For more information about Webb, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/webb

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

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Celebrating the Holiday Season in Space

The Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year holidays are joyful events typically spent with family and friends. Astronauts and cosmonauts who find themselves in space during the holidays have found their own unique way to celebrate the occasions. In the early years of the space program, holidays spent in space occurred infrequently, most notably the flight of Apollo 8 around the Moon during Christmas 1968, making them more memorable. As missions became longer and more frequent, holidays in space became more common occasions. For the past 23 years, holidays spent aboard the International Space Station have become annual, if not entirely routine, events.

Left: The famous Earthrise photograph, taken by the Apollo 8 crew in lunar orbit. Right: Video of the Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders reading from The Book of Genesis.

As the first crew to spend Christmas in space, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders, celebrated the holiday while circling the Moon in December 1968, the first humans to leave Earth orbit. They immortalized the event on Christmas Eve by taking turns reading the opening verses from the Bible’s Book of Genesis as they broadcast scenes of the Moon gliding by below. An estimated one billion people in 64 countries tuned in to their Christmas Eve broadcast. As they left lunar orbit, Lovell radioed back to Earth, where Christmas Eve had already turned to Christmas Day, “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus!”

Left: Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, left, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue trim their homemade Christmas tree in December 1973. Right: Carr, Gibson, and Pogue hung their stockings aboard Skylab.

During their 84-day record-setting mission aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974, Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue, and Edward G. Gibson celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in space – the first crew to spend Thanksgiving and New Year’s in orbit. They built a homemade Christmas tree from leftover food containers, used colored decals as decorations, and topped it with a cardboard cutout in the shape of a comet. Carr and Pogue spent seven hours on a Christmas Day spacewalk to change out film canisters and observe the passing Comet Kohoutek. Once back inside the station, they enjoyed a Christmas dinner complete with fruitcake, talked to their families, and opened presents. They even had orbital visitors of sorts, as Soviet cosmonauts Pyotr I. Klimuk and Valentin V. Lebedev orbited the planet aboard Soyuz 13 between Dec. 18 and 26, marking the first time that astronauts and cosmonauts were in space at the same time. Different orbits precluded any direct contact between the two crews.

Aboard Salyut-6, Georgi M. Grechko, left, and Yuri V. Romanenko, toast to celebrate the new year in space, the first Russian cosmonauts to do so. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

In the more secular Soviet era, the New Year’s holiday had more significance than the Jan. 7 observance of Orthodox Christmas. The first cosmonauts to ring in a new year in orbit were Yuri V. Romanenko and Georgi M. Grechko, during their record-setting 96-day mission in 1977 and 1978, aboard the Salyut-6 space station. They toasted the new year during a TV broadcast with the ground. The exact nature of the beverage consumed for the occasion has not been passed down to posterity.

Left: STS-61 mission specialist Jeffrey A. Hoffman with a dreidel during Hanukkah in December 1993. Right: Video of Hoffman describing how he celebrated Hanukkah aboard space shuttle Endeavour.

The eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, celebrates the recapture of Jerusalem and rededication of the Second Temple in 164 B.C.E. It occurs in the month of Kislev in the Hebrew lunar calendar, which can fall between late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. NASA astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman celebrated the first Hanukkah in space during the STS-61 Hubble Space Telescope first servicing mission in 1993. Hanukkah that year began on the evening of Dec. 9, after Hoffman completed his third spacewalk of the mission. He celebrated with a traveling menorah, unlit of course, and by spinning a dreidel.

The STS-103 crew show off their Santa hats on the flight deck of space shuttle Discovery in 1999.

The crew of another Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, STS-103, celebrated the first space shuttle Christmas in 1999 aboard Discovery. For Christmas dinner, Curtis L. Brown, Scott J. Kelly, Steven L. Smith, Jean-François A. Clervoy of the European Space Agency (ESA), John M. Grunsfeld, C. Michael Foale, and Claude Nicollier of ESA enjoyed duck foie gras on Mexican tortillas, cassoulet, and salted pork with lentils. Smith and Grunsfeld completed repairs on the telescope during a Christmas Eve spacewalk.

Left: Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mir Expedition 17 flight engineer Elena V. Kondakova with a bottle of champagne to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1994. Right: Video of Kondakova demonstrating the behavior of champagne in weightlessness aboard Mir. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

Between 1987 and 1998, 12 Mir expedition crews spent their holidays aboard the ever-expanding orbital outpost. Two of the crews included NASA astronauts, John E. Blaha and David A. Wolf, aboard the Russian space station as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program.  

Left: Video of Mir Expedition 22 flight engineer and NASA astronaut John E. Blaha’s 1996 Christmas message from Mir. Right: Mir Expedition 24 flight engineer and NASA astronaut David A. Wolf with his menorah and dreidel to celebrate Hanukkah in 1997. 

The last two New Year’s Eve messages from Mir. Left: Mir 24 crew of Pavel V. Vinogradov, left, NASA astronaut David A. Wolf, and Anatoli Y. Solovyev in 1997. Right: Mir 26 crew of Sergei V. Avdeyev, left, and Gennadi I. Padalka in 1998. It was the third time Avdeyev rang in the new year in space. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

The arrival of Expedition 1 crew members William M. Shepherd of NASA and Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos aboard the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2000, marked the beginning of a permanent human presence in space. The first to celebrate Christmas and ring in the new year aboard the fledgling orbiting laboratory, they began a tradition of reading a goodwill message to people back on Earth. Shepherd honored a naval tradition of writing a poem as the first entry of the new year in the ship’s log.

Left: Video of Expedition 1 crew members Yuri P. Gidzenko of Roscosmos, left, NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd, and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos reading their Christmas message in December 2000 – this marked Krikalev’s third holiday season spent in orbit, the first two spent aboard Mir in 1988 and 1991. Right: The space station as it appeared in December 2000.

Expedition 1 commander NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd’s poem, written for the New Year’s Day 2001 entry in the space station’s log, in keeping with naval tradition.

Left: A brief video selection of how some expedition crews celebrated Christmas aboard the space station. Right: From 2019, the Christmas message from the Expedition 61 crew members.

Enjoy the following selection of photographs and videos of international crews as they celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, and rang in the new year over the past 22 years aboard the space station.

Left: The Expedition 4 crew of Daniel W. Bursch of NASA, left, Yuri I. Onufriyenko of Roscosmos, and Carl E. Walz of NASA poses for its Christmas photo in 2001. Middle: NASA astronaut C. Michael Foale, left, and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri of Roscosmos of Expedition 8 celebrate Christmas in 2003. Right: The Expedition 10 crew of Salizhan S. Sharipov of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao festooned for New Year’s Eve 2004.

Left: Valeri I. Tokarev of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronaut William S. McArthur of Expedition 12 pose with Christmas stockings in 2005. Middle: The Expedition 14 crew of Mikhail V. Tyurin of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronauts Michael E. Lopez-Alegria and Sunita L. Williams pose wearing Santa hats for Christmas 2006. Right: The Expedition 16 crew of Yuri I. Malenchenko of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronauts Peggy A. Whitson and Daniel M. Tani, with Christmas stockings and presents in 2007.

Left: The Expedition 18 crew of E. Michael Fincke, left, and Sandra H. Magnus of NASA, and Yuri V. Lonchakov of Roscosmos enjoys its Christmas dinner in 2008. Middle: The five-member Expedition 22 crew of Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, left, Maksim V. Surayev and Oleg V. Kotov of Roscosmos, and Timothy J. Creamer and Jeffrey N. Williams of NASA around the Christmas dinner table in 2009. Right: The Expedition 26 crew of Oleg I. Skripochka of Roscosmos, left, Paolo A. Nespoli of the European Space Agency, Dmitri Y. Kondratyev of Roscosmos, Catherine G. “Cady” Coleman of NASA, Aleksandr Y. Kaleri of Roscosmos, and NASA’s Scott J. Kelly celebrates New Year’s Eve 2010. This marked Kaleri’s third holiday season spent in space.

Left: The Expedition 30 crew of NASA astronaut Donald R. Pettit, left, Anatoli A. Ivanishin and Oleg D. Kononenko of Roscosmos, André Kuipers of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Daniel C. Burbank, and Anton N. Shkaplerov of Roscosmos pose for their Christmas photo in 2011. Middle: Christmas 2012 photograph of Expedition 34 crew members of NASA astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn, left, Roman Y. Romanenko, Oleg V. Novitski, and Yevgeni I. Tarelkin of Roscosmos, Kevin A. Ford of NASA, and Chris A. Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency. Right: For Christmas in 2013, the Expedition 42 crew left milk and cookies for Santa and hung their stockings using the Joint Airlock as a makeshift chimney.

Left: Expedition 50 crew members Sergei N. Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, left, R. Shane Kimbrough of NASA, Andrei I. Borisenko and Oleg V. Novitski of Roscosmos, Peggy A. Whitson of NASA, and Thomas G. Pesquet of the European Space Agency celebrate New Year’s Eve in style in 2016. Middle: Expedition 54 crew member Mark T. Vande Hei of NASA strikes a pose as an Elf on the Shelf for Christmas 2017. Right: The Expedition 58 crew of David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, left, Anne C. McClain of NASA, and Oleg D. Kononenko of Roscosmos inspect their Christmas stockings for presents in 2018.

Three scenes from the 2019 holiday season aboard the space station. Left: Expedition 61 flight engineer Jessica U. Meir of NASA shows off her Hanukkah-themed socks in the Cupola. Middle: Expedition 61 crew members Andrew R. Morgan, left, and Christina H. Koch of NASA, Luca S. Parmitano of the European Space Agency, and Meir share their Christmas messages. Right: Expedition 61 crew members Koch, left, Morgan, Oleg I. Skripochka of Roscosmos, Meir, Aleksandr A. Skvortsov of Roscosmos, and Parmitano ring in the new year with harmonicas.

Three scenes from the 2020 holiday season aboard the space station. Left: Expedition 64 NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, left, Michael S. Hopkins, Kathleen H. Rubins, and Victor J. Glover and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) record Christmas greetings. Middle: Walker, left, Hopkins, Rubins, Glover, and Noguchi use an inflatable Earth globe as a substitute for the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball “drop” aboard the space station. Right: Expedition 64 crew members Sergei V. Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos, left, Hopkins, Walker, Sergei N. Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, Glover, Rubins, and Noguchi welcome in 2021 aboard the space station.

Left: During Expedition 66 in 2021, NASA astronauts Mark T. Vande Hei, left, Raja J. Chari, Kayla S. Barron, and Thomas H. Marshburn, and Matthias J. Maurer of the European Space Agency in a still from a video in which they share their thoughts about the holiday season. Right: Barron showing off the presents she wrapped for her six crewmates.

“It is a privilege to have the perspective of seeing so many countries,” said Expedition 66 Commander NASA astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn in a video sharing his thoughts about spending the New Year in space. “We can go from one side [of Earth] to another in just a few minutes and it truly gives us a feeling of unification for all human beings around the world.” “We get to see the sunrise many times a day, so thinking about the fact that people are waking up to a New Year each time we see that sunrise is pretty cool,” added NASA astronaut Raja J. Chari. In a social media post, ESA astronaut Matthias J. Maurer wrote about their New Year’s Eve dinner, and included a time lapse video of the festive meal.

Left: Expedition 68 crew members Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, left, and NASA astronauts Francisco C. “Frank” Rubio, Josh A. Cassada, and Nicole A. Mann record a holiday greeting from the space station. Right: Expedition 68 crew members wear holiday garb.

In 2022, Expedition 68 crew members NASA astronauts Nicole A. Mann, Josh A. Cassada, and Francisco C. “Frank” Rubio, and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata recorded a holiday message for everyone on the ground. They shared some of their personal traditions for the holidays and provided a glimpse of how they spend the holidays aboard the space station. 

Expedition 70 NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli’s felt menorah and dreidel that she used to celebrate Hanukkah.

Expedition 70 flight engineer NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli’s husband and two little girls made a felt menorah for her to celebrate Hanukkah during her mission. Since astronauts can’t light real candles aboard the space station, Moghbeli pinned felt “lights” for each night of the eight-day holiday. A dreidel spun in weightlessness will continue spinning until it comes in contact with another object, but can’t land on any of its four faces. 

Left: To celebrate New Year’s Day 2022, Shenzhou 13 astronauts Ye Guangfu, left, Zhai Zhigang, and Wang Yaping aboard the China Space Station Tiangong hold a live video call. Right: Wang, left, Zhai, and Ye celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Tiger aboard Tiangong.

On Jan. 1, 2022, for the first time Chinese astronauts celebrated a New Year in space. The Shenzhou 13 crew of Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu arrived aboard the China Space Station Tiangong on Oct. 15, 2021, for a six-month mission. On New Year’s Day 2022, they hosted a live video call and interacted with college students at venues in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Macao. For the Feb. 1 start of the Chinese New Year of the Tiger, they decorated the space station and sent best wishes to people on the ground for a happy and prosperous new year.

In January 2023, Shenzhou 15 astronauts Fei Junlong, left, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu send New Year’s greetings to Earth from the Tiangong China Space Station.

We hope you enjoyed these stories, photographs, and videos from holiday celebrations in space. This year, a record-tying 10 people from five nations will celebrate the holidays and ring in the new year while serving aboard two space stations – the International Space Station and the Tiangong China Space Station. We wish them all and everyone here on Earth the very best during the holiday season and hope that 2024 will indeed be a Happy New Year!

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Kelli Mars

NASA Asteroid Sampling Mission Renamed OSIRIS-APEX for New Journey

At the end of a long-haul road trip, it might be time to kick up your feet and rest awhile – especially if it was a seven-year, 4 billion-mile journey to bring Earth a sample of asteroid Bennu. But OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer), the NASA mission that accomplished this feat in September, is already well on its way (with a new name) to explore a new destination.

When OSIRIS-REx left Bennu in May 2021 with a sample aboard, its instruments were in great condition, and it still had a quarter of its fuel left. So instead of shutting down the spacecraft after it delivered the sample, the team proposed to dispatch it on a bonus mission to asteroid Apophis, with an expected arrival in April 2029. NASA agreed, and OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Apophis Explorer) was born.

A Rare Opportunity at Apophis

After considering several destinations (including Venus and various comets), NASA chose to send the spacecraft to Apophis, an “S-type” asteroid made of silicate materials and nickel-iron – a fair bit different than the carbon-rich, “C-type” Bennu.

The intrigue of Apophis is its exceptionally close approach of our planet on April 13, 2029. Although Apophis will not hit Earth during this encounter or in the foreseeable future, the pass in 2029 will bring the asteroid within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of the surface – closer than some satellites, and close enough that it could be visible to the naked eye in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Scientists estimate that asteroids of Apophis’ size, about 367 yards across (about 340 meters), come this close to Earth only once every 7,500 years.

“OSIRIS-APEX will study Apophis immediately after such a pass, allowing us to see how its surface changes by interacting with Earth’s gravity,” said Amy Simon, the mission’s project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Apophis’ close encounter with Earth will change the asteroid’s orbit and the length of its 30.6-hour day. The encounter also may cause quakes and landslides on the asteroid’s surface that could churn up material and uncover what lies beneath.

“The close approach is a great natural experiment,” said Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina, principal investigator for OSIRIS-APEX at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “We know that tidal forces and the accumulation of rubble pile material are foundational processes that could play a role in planet formation. They could inform how we got from debris in the early solar system to full-blown planets.”

Apophis represents more than just the opportunity to learn more about how solar systems and planets form: As it happens, most of the known potentially hazardous asteroids (those whose orbits come within 4.6 million miles of Earth) are also S-types. What the team learns about Apophis can inform planetary defense research, a top priority for NASA.

OSIRIS-APEX: Travel Itinerary

By April 2, 2029 – around two weeks before Apophis’ close encounter with Earth –  OSIRIS-APEX’s cameras will begin taking images of the asteroid as the spacecraft catches up to it. Apophis will also be closely observed by Earth-based telescopes during this time. But in the hours after the close encounter, Apophis will appear too near the Sun in the sky to be observed by ground-based optical telescopes. This means any changes triggered by the close encounter will be best detected by the spacecraft.

OSIRIS-APEX will arrive at the asteroid on April 13, 2029, and operate in its proximity for about the next 18 months. In addition to studying changes to Apophis caused by its Earth encounter, the spacecraft will conduct many of the same investigations OSIRIS-REx did at Bennu, including using its instrument suite of imagers, spectrometers, and a laser altimeter to closely map the surface and analyze its chemical makeup.

As an encore, OSIRIS-APEX will reprise one of OSIRIS-REx’s most impressive acts (minus sample collection), dipping within 16 feet of the asteroid’s surface and firing its thrusters downward. This maneuver will stir up surface rocks and dust to give scientists a peek at the material that lies below.

Although the rendezvous with Apophis is more than five years away, the next milestone on its journey is the first of six close Sun passes. Those near approaches, along with three gravity assists from Earth, will put OSIRIS-APEX on course to reach Apophis in April 2029.

What OSIRIS-APEX will discover about Apophis remains to be seen, but if the mission’s previous incarnation is any indication, surprising science lies ahead. “We learned a lot at Bennu, but now we’re armed with even more questions for our next target,” Simon said.

—

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-APEX. Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft. International partnerships on this mission include the spacecraft’s laser altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-APEX (previously named OSIRIS-REx) is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

By Lonnie Shekhtman and Rob Garner
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Rob Garner