3 ms·

There are papers covering contamination prevention and detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with the designs and intentions before launch

There are papers covering contamination prevention and detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with the designs and intentions before launch and papers with how well it went and their specific findings after return. Here is one sick paper covering some of the clean rooms https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897

tedd4u 10mo ago
Awesome -- dozens of the top people in their fields have been working on the contamination problem and publishing about it for almost two decades. The curation team was integrated with mission design and operations from the beginning, as early as 2004 (section 3.0). That integration allowed curation-specific needs such as contamination knowledge to be incorporated into the mission design early, when adjustments had minimal cost impact. Not only did this early integration inform planning for sample characterization, cataloging, allocation, and the development of detailed sample handling and containment approaches; it was also an investment in the longer term needs of the community. Here we describe these preparations for OSIRIS-REx, as a reference for sample scientists and curators and as a model for future sample return missions.