On April 7, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will give asteroid Bennu one last glance before saying farewell. Before departing for Earth on May 10, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will perform a final flyby of Bennu—capturing its last images of sample collection site Nightingale to look for transformations on Bennu’s surface after the Oct. 20, 2020, sample collection event. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-nasa-osiris-rex-farewell-bennu.html…
Tag: Bennu
China’s Chang’e 5 mission is orbiting the moon!
China’s robotic Chang’e 5 will be the 1st sample-return from the moon since the 1970s. It launched successfully last week atop a Chinese Long March 5 rocket. Now it’s reported to have entered orbit around the moon. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/china-moon-mission-change-5-sample-return…
Tagging Bennu: The Movie
This is what it looks like to punch an asteroid. Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html…
The Yarkovsky effect: Pushing asteroids around with sunlight
The Yarkovsky effect is a minuscule push on a small body in space, imparted by nothing more than sunlight. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/the-yarkovsky-effect-pushing-asteroids-around-with-sunlight…
Asteroid’s scars tell stories of its past
By studying impact marks on the surface of asteroid Bennu—the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission—a team of researchers led by the University of Arizona has uncovered the asteroid’s past and revealed that despite forming hundreds of millions of years ago, Bennu wandered into Earth’s neighborhood only very recently. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-asteroid-scars-stories.html…
NASA asteroid probe stows space-rock sample for return to Earth
OSIRIS-REx finished stowing the bits of the asteroid Bennu that it snagged last week, successfully locking the material into the spacecraft’s return capsule Source: https://www.livescience.com/nasa-osiris-rex-stows-asteroid-sample.html
OSIRIS-REx successfully stows sample of asteroid Bennu
NASA’s University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully stowed the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule and its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. On Oct. 28, the mission team sent commands to the spacecraft, instructing it to close the capsule—marking the end of one of the most challenging phases of the mission. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-osiris-rex-successfully-stows-sample-asteroid.html…
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Successfully Stows Sample of Asteroid Bennu
fahrbot-bot shares a press release from NASA: NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has successfully stowed the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule (SRC) and its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. On Wednesday, Oct. 28, the mission team sent commands to the spacecraft, instructing it to close the capsule — marking the end of one of the most…
Studying craters on asteroid Bennu shows how long it has been orbiting near Earth
A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S., Canada and Italy has found that studying the craters on asteroid Bennu allowed them to calculate how long it has been orbiting near Earth. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of craters formed on boulders on the asteroid. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-craters-asteroid-bennu-orbiting-earth.html…
NASA to launch delicate stowing of OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples
NASA’s robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is set to begin on Tuesday a delicate operation to store the precious particles it scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, but which were leaking into space when a flap got wedged open. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nasa-delicate-stowing-osiris-rex-asteroid.html…