Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerīennu is a leftover fragment from the tumultuous formation of the solar system. So why did scientists pick Bennu for this momentous investigation? Here are 10 reasons.Īrtist's concept of asteroids falling on forming planet. But the humble rock is but one of about 780,000 known asteroids in our solar system. This years-long quest for knowledge thrusts Bennu into the center of one of the most ambitious space missions ever attempted.
The spacecraft will then pack the sample into a capsule and travel back to Earth, dropping the capsule into Utah's west desert in 2023, where scientists will be waiting to collect it. It might collect as much as 2,000 grams, which would be the largest sample by far gathered from a space object since the Apollo Moon landings.
The spacecraft will briefly touch Bennu’s surface around July 2020 to collect at least 60 grams (equal to about 30 sugar packets) of dirt and rocks. When it arrives in December, OSIRIS-REx will embark on a nearly two-year investigation of this clump of rock, mapping its terrain and finding a safe and fruitful site from which to collect a sample. After traveling for two years and billions of kilometers from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx probe is only a few months away from its destination: the intriguing asteroid Bennu.
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