Chock full of carbon and nearly black in color, asteroid Bennu is a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule dating back to the dawn of our solar system.
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NASA’s Bennu-bound craft will spend the next two years chasing down the asteroid in the hopes of scooping up some sample from the prehistoric body. Collecting the sample will take only about five seconds, and if the first try is unsuccessful, OSIRIS-REx can try, try again – up to three times. Flying to another world is no simple matter.
Its predecessor, Hayabusa, was supposed to study the effect of a crash landing on asteroid Itokawa and recover samples to bring back to Earth, but it only managed to bring back a few micrograms of material in 2010.
“By visiting Bennu, we can very precisely determine its orbit, determine the physical forces affecting it, and do a much better job of predicting where it will be in the next couple of hundred years”, Scheeres said in the University of Colorado statement.
After launch, the spacecraft will take a two-year cruise toward the sun, enter orbit and being its chase for Bennu in August 2018.
Scientists will be able to create a detailed map of Bennu and characterize its surface composition and temperatures, before choosing a safe but scientifically interesting spot to collect a sample.
“The primary objective of the mission is to bring back 60 grams (2.1 ounces) of pristine carbon-rich material from the surface of Bennu”, said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the mission and a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona.
According to ancient mythology, Bennu was the manifestation of the god Osiris on Earth, taking the form of a heron-a slender bird.
“NASA knows of no asteroid or comet now on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small”, said a NASA spokesman, reports The Sun. Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at Goddard, summed NASA’s thoughts perfectly: “one [sample] is a lifetime of data anyway”. “This is the first mission in which Canada is participating that will scoop and carry samples of an asteroid back to Earth and some of that material, which looks like black rocks, will be studied in Canadian labs”.
This artist’s rendering made available by NASA on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016 shows the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with the Touch-And-Go Sample Arm Mechanism. BIG SPACE BALL Bennu is shaped like a ball, with a fat middle.
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Once back at Earth, the samples can be analyzed using sophisticated equipment that would be impossible to fit onto the spacecraft. Bennu measures 495 meters in diameter (about a third of a mile). “We are basically a space vacuum cleaner”, Lauretta said Wednesday. That cuts down on the travel time for Osiris-Rex and, via its proximity to the sun, keeps its solar wings energized. Bennu is a potentially hazardous object. “It also gives us some insight into how the mass is distributed inside the asteroid”. The asteroid releases that heat back into space and it acts like a thruster, changing the direction of the asteroid.
