Ⓒ NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
On Sept. 10th 2023, the trajectory-correction maneuver changed the spacecraft’s velocity ~ less than 1 km/h relative to Earth. Without this tiny but critical shift, the spacecraft and its asteroid cargo would have flown past Earth.
But now, the spacecraft is set up to release the capsule to enter the atmosphere just off the coast of California at 8:42 a.m. MDT / 10:42 a.m. EDT. Traveling at a precise speed and angle, it will land approximately 13 minutes after release in a 58-kilometer by 14-kilometer predetermined area on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, about 20 minutes after releasing the sample capsule, the spacecraft will fire its engines to divert past Earth and onto its next mission to asteroid Apophis: OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer). The spacecraft is currently 7 million kilometers, away, traveling at about 23,000 km/h toward Earth.