Next month, Earth will be paid a visit from an old cosmic friend: a two-mile-wide asteroid called (52768) 1998 OR2 that will come within about 4 million miles of our planet. This behemoth will be the largest asteroid to swoop in close to Earth’s orbit in 2020, zooming by at almost 20,000 miles per hour, according to Prabhjote Gill at Business Insider .
Known to researchers since July 1998, this massive space rock offers skygazers the chance to scope out an object that NASA has previously designated “ potentially hazardous ,” so named because they occasionally pass near Earth’s orbit and are large enough to cause serious damage on impact.
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NASA's OSIRIS-REx Executes Low-Altitude Flyover of Asteroid Landing Site - ExtremeTech
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe is about to make history, but the agency isn’t taking any chances. In the coming months, OSIRIS-REx will descend to the surface of the asteroid Bennu to pick up a sample, but NASA wants to get a closer look at the area before sending the spacecraft swooping down. OSIRIS-REx has just completed its lowest pass over the site yet , just 820 feet (250 meters) from the surface.
The scientists behind OSIRIS-REx were met with the same problem as JAXA researchers running Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission: asteroids are much less smooth than we expected. The surfaces of both space rocks are strewn with boulders and outcroppings that could cause damage to a space probe attempting to reach the surface. Hayabusa2 eventually found a place where it could tap the surface and scoop up a few grains of dust.
SpaceX will launch NASA's totally metal Psyche asteroid mission - CNET
The Psyche spacecraft likely won't be alone during launch. NASA expects to send a couple secondary payloads along for the ride. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission is designed to study the atmosphere of Mars. The Janus mission will investigate binary asteroids.
It will take the Psyche spacecraft until 2026 to reach its asteroid target. Falcon Heavy is quite a beast, so Psyche will get an appropriately dramatic send-off. Suggested launch music: Space Truckin' by Deep Purple.
Large asteroid will fly close to, but won't hit, Earth next month: NASA [Video]
CNN reports that the asteroid, predicted to be between 1.1 and 2.5 miles wide, is scheduled to fly past Earth on April 29.
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Asteroid Risks And Opportunities Global Theme Of Asteroid Day Leading Up To 30 June, 2020
"Asteroid Day was created to encourage the public and governments to learn more about asteroids and to support resources necessary to find and deflect asteroids," explains Dr. Brian May .
"SES has been supporting Asteroid Day for several years, and we are proud to again join efforts with other partners on this campaign to enable raising awareness about asteroids and space," said Ruy Pinto , Chief Technology Officer at SES .
NASA's Osiris-Rex is closer than ever to asteroid Bennu - CNET
NASA decided in December taht Osiris-Rex would collect samples at the Nightingale area of the asteroid, despite the location having "some hazards around it," according to principal investigator Dante Lauretta. Nightingale gives Osiris-Rex the best chance of getting its robot hands on "organic material and water-bearing material," NASA says.
Asteroid warning: Bizarre claim Bible warns of deep impact in 2029 - Book of Revelation | Weird |
According to Christian writer Thomas Horn, the Bible’s Book of Revelation virtually guarantees a cataclysmic, deep space impact.
One of these tragic events, Mr Horn has claimed, will be a large asteroid impact on April 13, 2029.
In an article for Charisma News, he said: “Revelation 8 and the first four trumpet judgments appear to describe the different stages of a singular event – a large asteroid impact on planet Earth, which I predict is coming in 2029 in the form of the asteroid Apophis.”
OSIRIS-REx Swoops Over Sample Site Nightingale on Asteroid Bennu
On March 3, 2020, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed a low-altitude flyover of site Nightingale. During the pass, science observations of asteroid Bennu took place from a distance of approximately 820 ft (250 m) – the closest the spacecraft has ever been to the asteroid’s surface. The primary goal of this flyover was to collect high-resolution imagery for the team to locate the site’s best areas for collecting a sample. Credit: University of Arizona
To perform the 5-hour flyover, the spacecraft left its 0.6-mile (1-km) safe-home orbit and aimed its science instruments toward the 52-ft (16-m) wide sample site. The science observations from this pass are the closest taken of Bennu to date.
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