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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft just won one of the most epic games of tag in human history. Last month, the plucky little craft reached out and high-fived Bennu, a diamond-shaped asteroid roughly the size of a skyscraper, snatching a sample of its surface in the process.
Orbiting the hunk of rock more than 200 million miles from Earth, the spacecraft extended its robotic arm and blasted the asteroid’s surface with pure nitrogen gas. It then used a sample collection head to vacuum up the disturbed material.
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NASA asteroid probe stows space-rock sample for return to Earth | Space
NASA's pioneering OSIRIS-REx probe has bagged up its precious asteroid sample for return to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx has finished stowing the bits of the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu that it snagged last Tuesday (Oct. 20), successfully locking the material into the spacecraft's return capsule, mission team members announced Thursday (Oct. 29).
And the sample appears to be substantial — far heftier than the 2.1 ounces (60 grams) the mission had set as a target, team members said. Indeed, OSIRIS-REx collected so much material on Oct. 20 that its sampling head couldn't close properly ; the head's sealing mylar flap was wedged open in places by protruding Bennu pebbles.
Asteroid Apophis is speeding up from sunlight as scientists recalculate odds of 2068 impact |
Astronomers say they'll have to keep an eye on the near-Earth asteroid Apophis to see how much of a danger the space rock poses to our planet during a close pass in 2068. But don't panic: The chances of an impact still seem very low.
Under certain circumstances, the sun can heat an asteroid unevenly, causing the space rock to radiate away heat energy asymmetrically. The result can be a tiny push in a certain direction — an effect called Yarkovsky acceleration, which can change the path of an asteroid through space.
Widespread carbon-bearing materials on near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu | Science
The near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu is a carbon-rich body with a rubble pile structure, formed from debris ejected by an impact on a larger parent asteroid. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is designed to collect a sample of Bennu's surface and return it to Earth. After arriving at Bennu, OSIRIS-REx performed a detailed survey of the asteroid and reconnaissance of potential sites for sample collection.
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Owing to their low reflectance and spectral similarity to primitive carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, C-complex asteroids are thought to contain carbon-bearing material. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft is designed to return a sample of carbonaceous material from the near-Earth C-complex asteroid (101955) Bennu.
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Asteroid the Size of the Great Pyramid of Giza Set to Pass Earth Tomorrow
An asteroid that could be almost 600 feet wide is set to fly by Earth on Saturday, passing us at a speed of more than 29,000 miles per hour.
The asteroid, named 2020 TY1, was first discovered in October. It is expected to pass at a distance of around 3.5 million miles, which is about 14 times the distance between Earth and the moon, meaning it poses no risk to our planet.
It is one of the largest asteroids to pass Earth in recent weeks, with the last of a similar size passing by on October 22. The space rock is estimated to be between 260 and 590 feet wide, making it around the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is 455 feet tall.
NASA's Delicate Mission To Sample Asteroid Bennu : Short Wave : NPR
An artist's rendering shows NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending toward the asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid's surface. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona hide caption
A NASA spacecraft sent out to collect a sample of rock and dust from an asteroid has nabbed so much that it's created an unexpected problem. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce shares a cautionary tale of a scientific mission that was almost too successful.
Whatever happened to the Election Day asteroid headed near Earth? - The Boston Globe
The outer space object known as the "Election Day Asteroid" must have used a mail-in ballot — it traveled past Earth before Tuesday and was nowhere close when it did, scientists say.
The planetary defenders at NASA, the European Space Agency, and other scientists know it by its formal designation of 2018 VP1 , which is among the thousands of objects tracked across the solar system on an ongoing basis.
And they were watching 2018 VP1, but not with anything approaching high alert since it was pretty clear to them that there was a big chunk of space between the Earth and the asteroid that was once thought to be coming within 4,000 miles of the planet.
Unpredictable space radio bursts may stem from asteroids around magnetic stars | Space
Mysterious repeating bursts of radio waves that fire in random patterns might come from neutron stars blasting asteroids with magnetic winds that travel at nearly the speed of light, a new study finds.
Fast radio bursts , or FRBs, are intense pulses of radio waves that can give off more energy in a few thousandths of a second than the sun does in nearly a century. Scientists only discovered FRBs in 2007, and much remains unknown about their origins because of their brief existence.
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The team is anxious to get their hands on the sample, but won't know for sure exactly how much material they have u… https://t.co/hfQJo5mU7O SmithsonianMag (from Washington, D.C.) Fri Nov 06 22:20:05 +0000 2020
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