NASA deep space probe reaches asteroid deemed potential Earth threat
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - NASA’s deep space explorer Osiris-Rex flew on Monday to within a dozen miles of its destination, a skyscraper-sized asteroid believed to hold organic compounds fundamental to life as well as the potential to collide with Earth in about 150 years.
Launched in September 2016, Osiris-Rex embarked on NASA’s unprecedented seven-year mission to conduct a close-up survey of the asteroid Bennu, collect a sample from its surface and return that material to Earth for study.
Bennu, a rocky mass roughly a third of a mile wide and shaped like a giant acorn, orbits the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth and is thought to be rich in carbon-based organic molecules dating back to the earliest days of the solar system. Water, another vital component to the evolution of life, may also be trapped in the asteroid’s minerals.
Scientists believe that asteroids and comets crashing into early Earth delivered organic compounds and water that seeded the planet for life, and atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could help prove that theory.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-asteroid/nasa-deep-space-probe-reaches-asteroid-deemed-potential-earth-threat-idUSKBN1O308Z
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Last edited Tue Dec 4, 2018, 07:48 AM - Edit history (1)
on NASA's "feature" web site.
Link: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/osiris-rex-approach
Looks like a huge overdone sesame dinner roll.....
Main NASA mission web page: https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Note that the sample brought back to earth will be between 2 and 70 ounces of regolith.....
(snip)
This test deployment was a rehearsal for a date in mid-2020 when the spacecraft will unfold the TAGSAM arm again, slowly descend to Bennu’s surface, and briefly touch the asteroid with the sampler head. A burst of nitrogen gas will stir up regolith on the asteroid’s surface, which will be caught in the TAGSAM head. The TAG sequence will take about five seconds, after which the spacecraft will execute small maneuvers to carefully back away from Bennu. Afterward, SamCam will image the sampler head, as it did during the test deployment, to help confirm that TAGSAM collected at least 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of regolith.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101955_Bennu
(snip)
Average orbital speed: 28,000 metres per second (63,000 mph)
Origin and evolution
The carbonaceous material that composes asteroid Bennu originally came from dying stars such as red giants and supernovae. According to the accretion theory, this material came together 4.5 billion years ago during the formation of the Solar System.
Asteroid Bennu's basic mineralogy and chemical nature would have been established during the first 10 million years of the Solar System's formation, where the carbonaceous material underwent some geologic heating and chemical transformation into more complex minerals. Bennu probably began in the inner asteroid belt as a fragment from a larger body with a diameter of 100 km.
That thing is moving on!............
Thinking regularly on the immensity of the universe, and the fluke of conditions that make life here possible for so many different creatures, helps me avoid taking little things too seriously.
I try to be joyous and cooperative.
maybe the asteroid will get things started, make Earth great again 
