Comment by Normal_gaussian

2 months ago

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

1 comment

Normal_gaussian

tedd4u 2 months 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.