WASHINGTON — NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will make one final close approach to the asteroid it collected samples from next week before heading back to Earth.
On April 7, the spacecraft will pass 3.7 kilometers above the location on the asteroid Bennu called Nightingale where, in October, the spacecraft briefly touched down and collected as much as several hundred grams of material , now stored in the spacecraft.
Immediately after that sample collection maneuver, the mission had no plans to return to the vicinity of Bennu. However, NASA decided to make a final pass over the touchdown site to see what changes the sampling made to the Nightingale region, like the creation of a crater.
Many things were taking place:
Asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs probably helped create our rainforests - The Washington Post
It was bad news for dinosaurs. But in the tropical rainforest, their loss was flowers' gain, a new study in the journal Science suggests.
To figure out what the area was like before the fiery extinction event, the researchers studied leaf and pollen fossils from the region. They tell a story of two different forests. Although the region was wet and warm before the crash, it teemed with conifers and ferns, and the widely spaced trees let in large patches of light.
NASA OSIRIS-REx's Final Asteroid Observation Run | NASA
NASA to launch spaceship to 'punch' asteroid, stop future impacts - The Jerusalem Post
What did we miss?
NASA plans head-on collision between spaceship and asteroid
In case an asteroid one day threatens Earth's existence, NASA has developed a contingency plan: Punch that asteroid with a spaceship. The plan is already well into its demo phase.
"Up until now, we haven't had too many options for what we might do if we found something that was incoming," Johns Hopkins planetary astronomer Andy Rivkin told Vice News of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. "DART is the first test of how we might be able to deflect something without having to resort to a nuclear package, or sitting in our basements, waiting it out and crossing our fingers."
Antarctica asteroid impact from 430,000 years ago discovered by scientists | Imperial News |
The international team, led by the University of Kent and including Imperial College London researchers, found the particles on the summit of the Walnumfjellet mountain in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica.
The particles, known as condensation spherules, point to an unusual touchdown event where an asteroid at least 100 metres in diameter hit the ice at high speed 430,000 years ago. This caused an explosion that unleashed a jet of melted and vapourised meteoritic material, which scattered and settled over the Antarctic ice sheet.
See 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid Heading Towards Earth Before Weekend's Close Approach
Astronomers have captured an image of a "potentially hazardous" asteroid that is set to make a close approach to the Earth this weekend.
The space rock, dubbed (231937) 2001 FO32, will come within around 1.3 million miles of our planet—equivalent to roughly five times the average distance between the Earth and the moon— at 11:03 a.m. ET on March 21, according to NASA 's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS.)
Gianluca Masi, an astronomer from the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP,) captured an image of the asteroid on March 16, using a remotely operated 17-inch telescope named "Elena" in Ceccano, Italy. At the time, the asteroid was located more than 10 million miles away from the Earth.
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