The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft capped its seven-year mission

Comecer DF Siena examined, designed, and produced an exclusive glove box isolator for NASA, with unique features such as low release of molecular contaminants.

OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.

It returned to Earth on September 24, 2023 to retrieve material from asteroid Bennu. Launched on September 8, 2016, the spacecraft collected rocks and dust - approximately 250 grams - from the surface of asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020. After further study of the asteroid, on May 10, 2021, the probe began its return cruise to Earth with the sample.

The material collected from Bennu will help scientists better understand the earliest days of our solar system, and answer significant questions about the origins of life and the nature of asteroids.

As scientists will be searching for organic molecules linked to life within the grains of Bennu, it is crucial that the sample is not exposed to the terrestrial environment, including life. Such contamination would make it challenging for scientists to distinguish which molecules come from space and which come from Earth.

To achieve this, once landed, the capsule was recovered and transported to a temporary cleanroom at the at the Utah Test and Training Range, and then transported at the NASA Johnson Space Center, eagerly awaiting its grand unveiling.

The sample is carefully placed inside a state-of-the-art custom glove box isolator meticulously crafted by Comecer DF Siena, that has studied, designed, and built this glove box isolator with unique low-release molecular contaminant systems and it will be used to analyze the returned Regolith samples.

Read more on the OSIRIS-Rex mission on https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex.

We are very proud to be involved in such an important mission, which could reveal important facts about the origin of life and the nature of asteroids.

This is the second space exploration project in which we are involved with our glove box isolators, the first one was for the Mars Rover assembly.

Would you like to know more about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission? Read the FAQs!