OSIRIS-REx ready for touchdown on asteroid Bennu0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 22, 2020
NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission is officially prepared for its long-awaited touchdown on asteroid Bennu’s surface.
NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission is officially prepared for its long-awaited touchdown on asteroid Bennu’s surface.
Nasa has revealed its final plans to land a probe on a huge space rock nicknamed the ‘apocalypse asteroid’.
Shortly after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu, an unexpected discovery by the mission’s science team revealed that the asteroid could be active, or consistently discharging particles into space. The ongoing examination of Bennu — and its sample that will eventually be returned to Earth — could potentially shed light on why this intriguing phenomenon is occurring.
The eruptions may hurl meteors toward Earth.
Asteroid Bennu is one of the Near-Earth Objects that is currently being studied by NASA.
Bennu is ready for its close-up.
A shock discovery is in from Bennu. The NASA spacecraft analysing the asteroid has observed it shooting out plumes of dust that surround it in a dusty haze – a phenomenon we’ve never seen in an asteroid before.
In late 2018, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrived at Bennu, the asteroid it will be studying and sampling over the next several years.
At 2:43 p.m. EST on December 31, while many on Earth prepared to welcome the New Year, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) away, carried out a single, eight-second burn of its thrusters – and broke a space exploration record.
Take a peek at asteroid Bennu: porous, blue, and with a water-rich parent body.