Collaborate Disseminate
NASA engineers have successfully stowed the leaking sampler head containing material from the asteroid Bennu inside the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsu… Continue reading OSIRIS-REx successfully stows leaking asteroid sampler
Images returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid explorer have confirmed that the spacecraft’s sample collector head is slowly leaking some of the material it gathered from the surface of the asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020.Continue ReadingCategory: Sp… Continue reading OSIRIS-REx is leaking asteroid samples due to jammed lid
On Tuesday this week, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of asteroid Bennu to snatch a sample of the ancient pristine rock, and took off again. And now NASA has released images and video from the robot’s perspective.Contin… Continue reading Watch the moment OSIRIS-REx tagged an asteroid to collect samples
In a truly remarkable feat of engineering, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx has scooped a sample of soil from the surface of asteroid Bennu, as it hurtles through space some 205 million miles from Earth. The spacecraft successfully touched the asteroid Bennu on Tuesd… Continue reading NASA’s OSIRIS-REx collects sample from surface of asteroid Bennu
After a four year trek through deep space, OSIRIS-REx made history this evening as it became the first NASA spacecraft to try and collect a surface sample from an asteroid (Editor’s note: servers may be down due to the breaking news). Once sensors verify the collected material is safely onboard, …read more
Continue reading OSIRIS-REx Reaches Out and Touches Asteroid Bennu
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe has been in orbit around asteroid Bennu for almost two years now, providing us with an unparalleled look at the surface of an asteroid. But what lurks below? New findings from its gravity field suggest Bennu’s core is less dense… Continue reading Central void may be tearing asteroid Bennu apart
Hardly a week goes by without a headline screaming about some asteroid or another making a close approach to Earth; it’s only by reading the fine print that we remember what an astronomer’s definition of “close” means. Still, 2020 being what it is, it pays to stay on top of …read more
ESA has awarded €129.4 million of funding to the planetary defense mission Hera, which will observe the results of humanity’s first attempt to intentionally alter the orbit of a solar system asteroid. The mission could be the fist step along the road t… Continue reading ESA moves forward with Hera planetary defense mission
NASA has given the University of Colorado Boulder and Lockheed Martin the green light for the Janus mission, which will see a pair of small satellites launched in 2022 to study two pairs of binary asteroids. About the size of carry-on luggage and weigh… Continue reading First mission for close-up study of binary asteroids gets NASA go-ahead
That was a close shave! On Tuesday, asteroid 2011 ES4 passed really close to the earth. JPL’s close approach data pegs its nominal distance from earth at about 0.00081083276352288 au! Yeah, we had to look it up too: that’s around 75,000 miles (120,000 kilometers), just ten times the diameter of …read more