It's Been 2 Months. Why Can't NASA Open the Asteroid Sample Container?

[TehShrike]

Talk about a challenging environment. In the interest of not contaminating the contents, you can only poke at it in a highly-constrained environment, using approved tools.

I don't imagine NASA is going to let the engineers make any quick changes to solve the problem.

[ararar]

This has been going on for a while: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_hemispheres

[scherlock]

Wish they had a photo of the two bolts they can't get out. Though I wonder if, in the vacuum of space, the metal of screws and the metal of the containers contact welded together due to high machining tolerances.

[opwieurposiu]

This paper has some more details of how the sample collection system works. I agree that cold-welding is likely.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-018-0521-6

[15457345234]

> Wish they had a photo of the two bolts they can't get out.

That'll be in the next drip marketing update, probably some random 'space fan' you've never heard of will tweet it and go viral.

[Hard_Space]

I re-watched The Andromeda Strain yesterday, and am glad to see this is only a (presumably) fixable technical hitch.

[hulitu]

> It's Been 2 Months. Why Can't NASA Open the Asteroid Sample Container?

They are ashamed to admit that they are empty.