A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside.
A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside.

NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold 

On 19th Jan, NASA revealed that it finally opened a jar. Wait, what?

As part of the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve samples from asteroid Bennu, the spacecraft completed a flyby maneuver, dropping samples off before heading off to its new destination. 

Although these samples entered the Earth’s atmosphere and landed successfully, members of the curation team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center encountered a rather mundane-sounding challenge while attempting to access these samples: they couldn’t remove two fasteners out of 35 from OSIRIS-REx’s Touch- and- Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM).

This led to the team having to pause disassembly halfway through October last year to design and fabricate two new multi-part tools from the hardest metal approved for use to tackle the two rogue fasteners: a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel.