Bennu | Common News Update

Sep232023 by adminNo Comments

Osiris-Rex: Asteroid Bennu ‘is a journey back to our origins’

Science

NASABy Jonathan AmosScience correspondent in Dugway, UtahNasa's Osiris-Rex capsule will come screaming into Earth's atmosphere on Sunday at more than 15 times the speed of a rifle bullet.It will make a fireball in the sky as it does so, but a heat shield and parachutes will slow the descent and bring it into a gentle touchdown in Utah's West Desert.The capsule carries a precious cargo - a handful of dust grabbed from asteroid Bennu, a mountain-sized space rock that promises to inform the most profound of questions: Where do we come from? "When we get the 250g (9oz) of asteroid Bennu back on Earth, we'll be looking at material that existed before our planet, maybe even some grains that existed before our Solar System," says Prof Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator on the mission. "We...

Oct292020 by adminNo Comments

OSIRIS-REx successfully stows sample of asteroid Bennu

Science

Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The asteroid sample collected by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft early this month has been safely secured in its return capsule. "We had originally planned to conduct the stow operation next week, but we're here to announce today that we've successfully completed that operation," Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said during a press conference on Thursday. Advertisement Last week, mission engineers were reviewing images of the spacecraft's sample collection head, the TAGSAM, when they noticed escaping particles. It turns out, the sample head was so full that a valve called the mylar flap -- designed to allow particles into the collection head but not out -- had gotten jammed. Instead of going ahead with mane...

Oct202020 by adminNo Comments

Nasa’s Osiris-Rex probe aims for daring ‘high five’ with asteroid Bennu

Science

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Aug242018 by adminNo Comments

OSIRIS-REx begins approach toward asteroid Bennu

Science

Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The asteroid approach phase of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission has officially begun. Last week, the spacecraft's PolyCam camera photographed the target asteroid Bennu from a distance of 1.4 million miles, inaugurating the asteroid operations campaign. Bennu appears as a blurry white speck in the grainy image. "Many of us have been working for years and years and years to get this first image," Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, told reporters during a press briefing on Friday. The Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft, which launched almost two years ago, boomeranged around Earth in 2017, setting the craft on its proper course. Now, Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group, is within view. "When we flew by the earth, the f...