LITTLETON — The world watched Tuesday as Colorado’s aerospace industry shined.

Inside the Lockheed Martin Waterton campus, nestled in the hills of Waterton Canyon near the southwest corner of metro Denver, whoops and hollers echoed throughout the hallways. They came in response to Lockheed-built spacecraft Osiris-REx successfully grabbing some space dirt from an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building, more than 200 million miles away and moving at speeds of more than 61,300 mph.

The world watched NASA-TV’s live feed, which was broadcast from the mission support area here.

“We overcame so many challenges to get here,” said Ryan Olds, manager of the spacecraft’s guidance, navigation and control systems.

Olds and his fellow blue-shirt clad TAG Team members (TAG is “touch and go”) waited 1,502 days for Tuesday’s successful mission. It’s safe to say the TAG Team members slept better Tuesday night than the previous night.

Across metro Denver at the headquarters of United Launch Alliance (ULA) in Centennial, employees were also celebrating — including Scott Messer.

“There are two times that are always a thrill for me,” said Messer, the ULA program manager for NASA Launch Services. “The day we launch and the day the mission is a success. So we’re super excited today and honored that NASA trusts us to launch these critical missions.”

Osiris-REx — short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer — left Earth on Sept. 8, 2016, aboard ULA’s Atlas V rocket. It’s the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program.

The challenges Olds mentioned included a global pandemic; previously undiscovered rough terrain on asteroid Bennu; and exploding surface rocks.

But the teamwork between NASA, the University of Arizona, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed and ULA proved to be the foundation on which to build a successful Origins mission.

Now they all get to wait more than two years for the space dirt (regolith) sample to return to Earth aboard a sample return capsule, which will be launched from Osiris-REx in March. It’s expected to land in a Utah desert just outside of Salt Lake City in September 2023.

Waiting for the replay

“Today is just phenomenal, almost surreal,” systems engineer Trevor Perkins said. “You don’t get to wake up every day and make history at work. While I’ve waited years, there are some who dedicated their whole careers to this mission.”

Perkins has been on the Osiris-REx team for two years, and at Lockheed for three. He came to Colorado from Florida after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

He’s part of the growing aerospace industry in Colorado, which according to the Colorado Space Coalition is first in the U.S. for private aerospace employment concentration and the second-largest aerospace economy in the country. About 8,000 of Lockheed Martin’s 11,000 employees in Colorado work for Lockheed Martin Space. ULA has been headquartered in Denver since it began in 2006, with approximately 1,200 employees based in metro Denver.

On Tuesday, members of the media from National Geographic to a Japanese television station to local representatives were escorted to the mission support area to view operations, then to a conference room to witness the live feed from NASA-TV. The feed played a computer-generated simulation of the TAG moment, showing how the 11-foot arm that extended from the spacecraft to touch the asteroid surface — dubbed TAGSAM — would shoot nitrogen into the ground and collect up to 2,000 grams of space dirt that got kicked up.

“What an extraordinary day,” said Beau Bierhaus, TAGSAM scientist, after the successful sample grab. “The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do and followed the planned descent trajectory perfectly.”

Bierhaus has been working on the project for 16 years and led the team that designed, built and tested the mechanical arm with the SAM (sample acquisition mechanism) that allowed the sample collection. NASA approved the mission in 2011.

He choked up a bit when recalling how, earlier in the day, he told all his family and friends to watch NASA-TV. Before the TAG moment, his wife sent him a picture of his children watching their dad’s life’s work playing out in front of a global audience.

It took radio waves more than 18 minutes to travel the 200 million miles from the spacecraft back to Earth. So the craft had been programmed to execute the mission moves well in advance. The TAG Team was just waiting to “see” the replay — radio signals ticking off successful execution of the mission’s commands.

Signals that the voice of mission control announced to the team from about 3:45 p.m. to the final confirmation of sample collection at 4:14 p.m. Applause came with each announcement — as they all carried good news:

• “Check point burn complete.” Spacecraft headed to Bennu surface.

• “Match point burn.” Rockets fired to push craft to TAG spot.

• “Go for TAG.” Huge applause. The spacecraft made the decision whether or not to TAG. If it would have pulled out, there would be time and fuel necessary to try up to two more times in coming weeks.

• “Touchdown declared. Sampling is in progress.”

• “Sample selection complete.”

Pictures of the history-making event didn’t arrive to Earth until Wednesday morning. Team members didn’t know how much sample was collected until Saturday.

“That was just textbook,” said a beaming Coralie Adam, the TAG NAV (navigation) manager. “I’m just in awe of everything that just happened. It went totally perfectly, exactly as planned down to less than a meter. We nailed a bullseye.”

Adam has been on the Osiris-REx project for nine years. She recalled the team’s excitement when the spacecraft entered Bennu’s orbit Dec. 31 — the first time a U.S. craft has orbited an asteroid. It immediately began mapping and photographing the surface.

What it revealed startled scientists on several levels.

Olds, a University of Colorado at Boulder alum, said they were anticipating large swaths of sandy-like smooth surface, based on long-range data and observations. What they found was an alien landscape littered with boulders and rocks. They nicknamed one of the larger boulders “Mount Doom” — as that is what would happen if the spacecraft got too close.

“That was a big surprise when we got there,” Olds said. “But you have to remember, we’re seeing a spot no human had seen before.”

Team members used new Natural Feature Tracking technology, which works like facial recognition for the surface of the asteroid, to map boulders and terrain features. The discovery caused the original TAG target area to dwindle from 25 meters (165 feet) to less than 8 meters — no wider than a couple of parking spaces. By the time all was said and done, the TAGSAM hit the surface for about five to 15 seconds less than 1 meter from where they planned to TAG in the Nightingale Crater, he said.

The other shock was the discovery of “exploding rocks.”

“One early, unexpected discovery, was some of the rocks on the surface were fracturing and shooting off into space, like some mini-eruption,” Olds said.

The rocks would get trapped in the Bennu’s atmosphere and circle it, then crash back to the surface. Were that to happen when the spacecraft was performing the TAG, it could’ve quickly ended the mission, a scenario Olds described as “terrifying.”

Why Osiris-REx’s work is critical

Bennu — which got its name from an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the sun, creation, and rebirth — is being studied for several important reasons.

It’s what scientists call a “potentially hazardous asteroid.” That’s because it’s on a trajectory to possibly hit Earth in 150 years.

“With this data we can model and better predict what asteroids like this will do,” Olds said.

For example, researchers found the side of Bennu that faces the sun heats considerably, and that heat radiation alters the course of its trajectory.

And scientists can’t wait to get their hands on that carbon-rich space dirt.

“This could give us clues to our origin. We want to learn more about how the solar system was formed and what material large asteroids could have brought to earth when they impacted it,” Olds said.

“Our vision has come true. Our dreams have come true,” said Dante Lauretta, professor at the University of Arizona and principal investigator.

When asked to describe his and TAG Team’s emotions, Lauretta could only reel out a string of words: “Ecstatic. Happy. Proud. Emotional. Overwhelmed.”

While many TAG Team members were able to be together at Waterton, the pandemic prevented the whole team from celebrating together Tuesday.

“The hardest part about this whole day is that the whole team is not here at this moment,” Lauretta said, adding “This happened because of the hard work and dedication of thousands of people from all across the globe who just achieved one of the greatest moments of humanity. The very best of the human spirit is at work here.”