{"id":34427,"date":"2023-09-22T15:50:18","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T20:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=34427"},"modified":"2023-09-22T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T20:50:18","slug":"osiris-rex-lands-in-your-post-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2023\/09\/22\/osiris-rex-lands-in-your-post-office\/","title":{"rendered":"OSIRIS-REx Lands in Your Post Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"OSIRIS-REx<\/figure>\n

SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 9\/22\/23 – The U.S. Postal Service today celebrated the imminent arrival of samples of the asteroid Bennu from NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission by releasing a stamp in a dedication ceremony at the Clark Planetarium.<\/p>\n

While dedicating the stamp, Robert Raines, the Postal Service\u2019s business solutions vice president, said, \u201cI think we would all agree that this mission exemplifies the best of American innovation. That\u2019s why the Postal Service is proud to recognize it \u2014 and to add OSIRIS-REx to the long list of U.S. stamps honoring remarkable achievements in ingenuity, perseverance and teamwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Puzio, now an engineering student at North Carolina State University, was in third grade in 2013 when he won a contest to name the asteroid. He said about his involvement with the mission, \u201cIt feels surreal just thinking about it. Opportunities from OSIRIS-REx have changed my life, and remembering that I am a known part of that baffles me sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOSIRIS-REx will give us amazing insights into the formation and early evolution of the solar system, in particular, we anticipate the samples will provide new information about the kinds of materials that made up our infant Earth,\u201d said Lori Glaze, director of NASA\u2019s Planetary Science Division at the agency\u2019s Headquarters in Washington. \u201cWe are exceptionally pleased that the Postal Service will commemorate this journey of exploration and help NASA share the excitement of discovery with the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for the mission\u2019s goals: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer. More simply, \u201cOrigins\u201d refers to the study of the pristine carbon-rich material the spacecraft collected. \u201cSpectral Interpretation\u201d means measuring the composition of the asteroid. \u201cResource Identification\u201d is assessing potential fuel, oxygen, water and minerals on the asteroid. \u201cSecurity\u201d relates to scientists\u2019 calculating the odds of Bennu colliding with Earth. The final part of the mission\u2019s name, REx, is short for \u201cRegolith Explorer,\u201d and it refers to studying the regolith \u2014 or layer of loose material on the asteroid\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx, which is the size of a large passenger van, left Earth aboard a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on Sept. 8, 2016. Once released from the rocket, it orbited the sun for a year until it passed by Earth again. At that point, our planet\u2019s gravity helped propel the spacecraft toward Bennu. After OSIRIS-REx arrived in the asteroid\u2019s orbit, in December 2018, it got to work. With its special cameras and spectrometers, it began photographing and mapping Bennu\u2019s surface to determine the best site from which to collect samples. Scientists were surprised to learn, from the photographs the spacecraft sent back, that the asteroid\u2019s surface was much different from what they had expected. Instead of being relatively smooth, it was rocky and cratered, so finding a sample-collection site posed challenges. Eventually they chose a site about the size of a tennis court, located in a crater.<\/p>\n

The time for the rendezvous arrived in October 2020. To carry out its task, the spacecraft did not actually land on the asteroid but instead slowly descended toward the surface and extended a robotic arm. A collection device at the hand-end of the arm then released a sudden puff of nitrogen gas that sent up a cloud of dust and rocks from Bennu\u2019s surface. NASA estimates about 8.8 ounces of these materials were captured in a special container in the collection device, which then closed and retracted into the spacecraft. Even though this seems like a miniscule amount, considering the effort involved, it\u2019s the largest sample ever collected from an asteroid, and the first such collection by the United States.<\/p>\n

On May 10, 2021, OSIRIS-REx began its flight back toward Earth. Its container of asteroid dust and rocks, enclosed in a special capsule, will parachute onto the Utah desert on Sept. 24, 2023.<\/p>\n

The OSIRIS-REx mission \u2014 a collaboration among NASA, the University of Arizona, and Lockheed Martin \u2014 exemplifies American ingenuity, perseverance and teamwork.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the mission, visit\u00a0www.nasa.gov\/osirisrex<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stamp artwork shows the capsule containing the sample parachuting to the Utah Test and Training Range, a U.S. Department of Defense facility. A depiction of Bennu\u2019s surface appears at the bottom of the pane\u2019s selvage, with outer space above \u2014 deep blue and dappled with celestial bodies. A view of the asteroid is in the upper right corner.<\/p>\n

Along the left side of the pane are four images that illustrate crucial milestones. The top image shows OSIRIS-REx one year into the mission, passing 11,000 miles over Antarctica, as Earth\u2019s gravity boosts the spacecraft toward Bennu. The second image represents OSIRIS-REx conducting its two-year global mapping campaign of Bennu, searching for the best location to collect a sample. The third image shows the spacecraft\u2019s orbit in yellow and its path to the asteroid in white. In the fourth image, OSIRIS-REx extends its robotic arm to Bennu\u2019s surface to capture a sample. On the reverse side of the pane is text courtesy of NASA that describes the OSIRIS-REx mission and explains each image.<\/p>\n

Alan Dingman illustrated the stamp and pane, basing his work on images supplied by NASA. Antonio Alcal\u00e1, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp and pane.<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx is issued as a pane of 20 Forever stamps, which will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail 1?ounce price. News of the release is being shared with the hashtag\u00a0#OSIRISRExStamp<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Postal Products<\/strong><\/p>\n

Customers may purchase stamps and other philatelic products through the\u00a0Postal Store<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0usps.com\/shopstamps<\/em><\/a>, by calling 844-737-7826, by mail through\u00a0USA Philatelic<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or at select Post Office locations nationwide. For officially licensed stamp products, shop the\u00a0USPS Officially Licensed Collection on Amazon<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

\n

The United States Postal Service is an independent federal establishment, mandated to be self-financing and to serve every American community through the affordable, reliable and secure delivery of mail and packages to nearly 165 million addresses six and often seven days a week. Overseen by a bipartisan Board of Governors, the Postal Service is implementing a 10-year transformation plan,\u00a0Delivering for America<\/em><\/a>, to modernize the postal network, restore long-term financial sustainability, dramatically improve service across all mail and shipping categories, and maintain the organization as one of America\u2019s most valued and trusted brands.<\/p>\n

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 9\/22\/23 – The U.S. Postal Service today celebrated the imminent arrival of samples of the asteroid Bennu from NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission by releasing a stamp in a dedication ceremony at the Clark Planetarium. While dedicating the stamp, Robert Raines, the Postal Service\u2019s business solutions vice president, said, \u201cI think we would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-usps-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34430,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions\/34430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}