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NASA cases Asteroid Bennu ahead of snatch and grab — finds six new secrets, including a possible void under the surface

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-spacecraft-asteroid-landing-osiris-rex-2020-10">Osiris-Rex</a> <keyword id="6375764" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="spacecraft">spacecraft</keyword> captured an estimated 2 pounds of material from the <keyword id="6549794" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="asteroid">asteroid</keyword> <keyword id="2192688" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bennu">Bennu</keyword>, where it recently <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-video-osiris-rex-probe-landing-on-asteroid-kicking-dust-2020-10">landed</a>.</li><li>The spacecraft collected so much alien dust and rock, in fact, that it couldn't close its sample-collection tool.</li><li>So mission controllers raced to stow the sample to stop <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-sample-leaking-into-space-2020-10">asteroid dust from leaking into space</a>.</li></ul><p>NASA's <keyword id="1369683" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="OSIRIS-REx">Osiris-Rex</keyword> <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword>craft successfully scooped up rocky space dust from the asteroid Bennu on Friday. But in a sense, it completed its task too well: Scientists quickly realized that the spacecraft's sample-collecting arm had gathered so much material that its valves wouldn't close. That was leading the dust to leak back into space.</p><p>"Time is of the essence," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Mission Directorate at NASA, said.</p><p>So this week, the mission team instructed Osiris-Rex to store its sample inside the designated return capsule ahead of schedule. On Thursday, NASA confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully done so. </p><p>"I am extremely happy with the sample that we've collected," Dante Lauretta, the Osiris-Rex mission lead, said in a briefing on Thursday. Scientists are pretty sure the spacecraft stashed at least 2 pounds (1 kilogram) of asteroid dust, also called regolith, he added.</p><p>That's far more than the mission's minimum goal of 2.1 ounces, which is about the mass of a small bag of potato chips. The leaking that occurred before the sample was stored away was only a matter of "tens of grams," according to Lauretta.</p><p>Once Osiris-Rex returns to Earth in 2023, it's set to drop the capsule holding the asteroid material into the atmosphere. Then the capsule should parachute down into the Utah desert for NASA to pick up. It will be the agency's first sample collected from an asteroid.</p><h2>Maneuvering a spacecraft 200 million miles away</h2><div type="image" title="osiris rex gif particles falling out" height="492" width="985" msid="78943248" hostid="261"></div><p>To collect its asteroid sample, Osiris-Rex had to fly through a dangerous rock field and give Bennu a kind of cosmic high-five — it touched the surface for just six seconds.</p><p>The day after that brief landing, the spacecraft beamed images of its precious cargo back to NASA, but the scientists saw debris drifting away. The mission team had previously planned to spend a couple weeks assessing the sample, but they feared losing too much material to the vacuum of space. So they rushed the storage process, working day and night for two days to ensure the sample-collection arm could properly secure the sample inside the capsule.</p><p>The arm's wrist had to align properly with the capsule so they'd fit together, which sounds simple, but because the spacecraft is 200 million miles away, every command and response faced an 18-minute lag.</p><p>By Tuesday, the probe's arm had successfully placed its leaky sample-collecting head into the open capsule. To make sure it was locked in, the team directed the arm to tug on the collector head once more and make sure it was securely fastened.</p><p>By the following day, the team had detached the sample-collecting head from its arm and sealed the return capsule shut.</p><h2>'The more the merrier' when it comes to sample material</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid bennu rotating osiris rex" height="800" width="800" msid="78943249" hostid="261"></div><p>Osiris-Rex is expected to begin its long journey home in March 2021. It's slated to return the storage capsule to Earth on September 24, 2023. Within days of the sample's landing in Utah, the team hopes to start analyzing it at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA will also preserve some of the regolith for future study.</p><p>"These samples returned from Bennu will also allow future planetary scientists to ask questions we can't even think of today and to be able to use analysis techniques that aren't even invented yet," Lori Glaze, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said.</p><p>That research could be crucial over the next 100-plus years, since Bennu's path puts it at risk of crashing into Earth.</p><p>"Bennu is one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, with a non-negligible chance of impacting the Earth at some point in the 22nd century," Lauretta said last month. "Part of our science investigation is about understanding its orbital trajectory, refining the impact probability, and documenting its physical and chemical properties so that future generations can develop an impact-mitigation mission, if that's necessary."</p><p>There are other important reasons to study Bennu as well: As new missions go deeper into space, they will likely need to make pit stops to mine asteroids for resources like water, which can be split into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel. The data NASA is gathering from Bennu could help inform future asteroid-mining attempts.</p><p>Similar research could also look at asteroid samples from Japan's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-lands-spacecraft-on-ryugu-asteroid-2019-7">Hayabusa-2 spacecraft</a>, which is set to bring its material back to Earth in December.</p><p>The large volume of regolith that Osiris-Rex collected means NASA will be able to send the alien rock to more laboratories for more experiments than would have been possible had it collected just the minimum 2.1 ounces.</p><p>"My goal is to get the sample out to as many qualified laboratories around the planet as possible as quickly as possible," Lauretta said. "There's great discoveries to be made, and we it looks like we have abundant sample, so the more the merrier."</p>

NASA's asteroid-blasting spacecraft has stored over 2 pounds of alien dust and rock to bring back to Earth

<ul><li>New observations have found that the Apophis or ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid, which is the size of three football fields, is speeding up due to the Yarkovsky effect.</li><li>This is when the asteroid heats up in a non-uniform way, leading to the release of heat exerting a thrust that can alter the asteroid’s direction or speed it up.</li><li>The discovery of the Yarkovsky effect means that there’s still a possibility that the <keyword id="8002264" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="apophis-asteroid">Apophis asteroid</keyword> may hit Earth in 2068.</li></ul>The Apophis asteroid — named after the God of Chaos — is getting pushed around by sunlight and getting faster as it heads towards Earth. According to the researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (<a href="https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/10/26/new-massive-asteroid-findings/">IfA</a>), it is under the influence of the Yarkovsky effect.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="apophis discovery" msid="78896065" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Image of Asteroid Apophis when it was first discovered on 14 June 2004&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />This is when the asteroid speeds up because its thermal radiation is no longer uniform. Simply put, some parts of the asteroid are heating up faster than other parts.<br /><br />Before the detection of this effect, Apophis — which is the size of three football fields — was likely to fly past Earth in 2068. However, the impact of the Yarkovsky acceleration means that the there is still a possibility that the massive asteroid may crash into the planet when it rolls around in another 50 years. <br /><br />The potential impact would be the equivalent of 880 million tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT) exploding simultaneously. This would make it 65,000 times more destructive than the Hiroshima nuclear disaster.<br /><br /><strong>What is the Yarkovsky effect?<br /></strong>The Yarkovsky effect makes it difficult to make long term predictions about how an asteroid will move over long periods.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="YarkovskyEffect_NRAO_300dpi_large" msid="78896106" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Diagram explaining the Yarkovsky effect&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />It happens where sunlight heats up the dayside of the asteroid, and after the asteroid turns, the night side releases the heat. That release can exert a small thrust, which can result in a change of direction. It can also accelerate or decelerate the asteroids current speed.<br /><br />The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) most recent endeavour to collect a sample from Asteroid Bennu is one of the ongoing initiatives to understand the influence of the Yarkovsky effect.<br /><br /><strong>The Apophis asteroid could hit Earth<br /></strong>"The new observations we obtained with the Subaru telescope earlier this year were good enough to reveal the Yarkovsky acceleration of Apophis, and they show that the asteroid is drifting away from a purely gravitational orbit by about 170 meters per year, which is enough to keep the 2068 impact scenario in play," said <a href="https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/10/26/new-massive-asteroid-findings/">Dave Tholen</a>, co-author of the paper presented at the 2020 virtual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.<br /><br />It’s not uncommon for small asteroids between the size of 5 to 10 meters to pass by Earth, but asteroids the size of Apophis are rare. Not only are they fewer in number, but don’t normally come this close to Earth. <br /><br />Before 2068 rolls around, Apophis is scheduled to visit Earth even sooner on April 13, 2029. The massive 340-meter asteroid will be visible streaking across Earth’s skies without the aid of a telescope or binoculars. <br /><br /><div type="image" title="apophis" msid="78895938" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;NASA animation shows the distance between the Apophis asteroid and Earth at the time of the asteroid&amp;#39;s closest approach. The blue dots are the many man-made satellites that orbit our planet, and the pink represents the International Space Station.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br /><br />According to NASA, even this close encounter <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/elon-musk-says-we-have-no-defence-against-asteroid-god-of-chaos/articleshow/70748251.cms">may have an impact on Apophis</a>. Since it will only be 30,000 kilometers from the planet — Earth’s gravitational field may impact the way the asteroid spins or result in a change on its surface.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/ufologist-claims-the-god-of-chaos-asteroid-will-strike-somewhere-over-europe/articleshow/71537022.cms">Ufologist Michael Horn</a> claims if Apophis were, in fact, to crash into Earth, the impact point would be somewhere over Europe. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/china-launches-three-new-spy-satellites-amid-border-dispute-with-india-and-tensions-in-the-south-china-sea/articleshow/78886330.cms">China launches three new spy satellites amid border dispute with India and tensions in the South China Sea</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/kotak-mahindra-bank-share-price-jumps-after-earning-reports-and-possible-msci-inclusion/articleshow/78887434.cms">Kotak Mahindra Bank surges 10% on earnings upgrades and potential MSCI inclusion</a><br /><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/hcl-tech-is-looking-to-expand-operations-in-canada-if-h-1b-visa-issues-persist/articleshow/78884838.cms"><strong>EXCLUSIVE: HCL Tech is expanding operations in Canada as H-1B visa issues persist</strong></a><br />

Apophis, the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid is speeding up — increasing the likelihood of it hitting Earth in 2068

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul><li><strong>The Cassini spacecraft was destroyed at Saturn on Friday around 6:32 a.m. EDT.</strong></li><li><strong>It took more than an hour for the probe's last signal to reach antennas on Earth.</strong></li><li><strong>NASA's $3.26-billion mission was ended to prevent contaminating salty oceans of Saturn's moons - water that may harbor alien life.</strong></li><li><strong>The space agency is now reviewing a handful of proposals to return to Saturn and its moons.</strong></li></ul><p>With the crackle and fade of a signal beamed from 932 million miles away, NASA's 20-year Cassini mission at Saturn came to an end on Friday morning.</p><p>The bus-size Cassini probe began its descent into Saturn around 6:31 a.m. EDT, local time, while streaming unprecedented real-time measurements of the planet's atmosphere. The probe ramped up its thrusters to keep its antenna dish pointed toward Earth to send the data.</p><p>However, its connection with Earth didn't last much longer: The thrusters weren't designed to keep a spacecraft righted while plunging into Saturn at 78,000 mph.</p><p>Cassini began to tumble, breaking its last bond with Earth around 7:55 a.m. The signal was lost. And then the probe died.</p><p>It's unlikely that anyone saw it happen - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cassini-death-will-it-be-visible-nasa-hubble-telescopes-2017-9">not even powerful telescopes</a> - but NASA surmises that its "faithful traveler from Earth" heated up to hundreds and then thousands of degrees, broke apart, disintegrated, and vaporized into a small, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cassini-saturn-mission-death-plutonium-238-burn-up-2017-8">plutonium-laced meteor</a> that streaked above Saturn's clouds.</p><p><br>Before dying, Cassini's final communication traveled at light-speed from Saturn, taking just <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/time-cassini-will-be-destroyed-timeline-2017-9">over 1 hour 23 minutes</a> to pass through the void of space and reach Earth. Giant radio dishes in Australia picked up the signal&#xa0;and forwarded the data to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (the heart of the Cassini mission).</br></p><p>Silence fell over the control<span>&#xa0;room, which was full of Cassini's scientific stewards and their family members. Everyone stared at their screens.&#xa0;</span>When the feed of data stopped,&#xa0;people&#xa0;clapped, then hugged, and many could be heard crying.</p><p>"The signal from the spacecraft is gone, and so will be the spacecraft in the next 45 seconds," said Earl Maize, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who manages the Cassini mission, during a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cassini-grand-finale-video-nasa-youtube-ustream-2017-9">live broadcast by NASA TV</a>. "This has been an incredible spacecraft, an incredible mission, and you're all an incredible team."</p><p>NASA could not&#xa0;confirm exactly what time Cassini met its doom, though the agency estimated it happened seconds to minutes after they lost touch with the probe.</p><p>One thing is clear, though: The space agency's $3.26-billion mission to explore Saturn is over.</p><p>"Thank you, Cassini, and farewell," Maize said during a press conference on Wednesday.</p><h2>Why NASA killed the Cassini probe</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Cassini left Earth with 6,900 lbs of propellant in its tanks. This allowed it to adjust its orbit around Saturn and visit one moon after the next, leading to astonishing discoveries.<p>The probe discovered six new moons, mysterious "propeller objects" in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-saturn-rings-image-cassini-2017-4">Saturn's rings</a>, documented a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saturn-hexagon-storm-images-2017-5">giant hexagon</a> swirling atop the planet's north pole, photographed <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/incredible-pictures-of-lakes-on-saturns-moon-titan-2013-12">hydrocarbon lakes</a> on Titan (Saturn's largest moon), and found a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-water-ice-volume-versus-planets-moons-2016-11">vast ocean</a> of salty water - which may harbor alien life - below the icy crust of the moon <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saturns-moon-enceladus-cassini-ocean-life-global-salty-nasa-2015-9">Enceladus</a>.</p><p>In 2010, Cassini had enough propellant left to either fly by Uranus or Neptune, or continue to explore Saturn and its moons.</p><p>If it had flown past one of those planets and shot out into space, Cassini would have had enough <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-powered-spacecraft-nasa-history-2017-3">plutonium-238 fuel</a> to keep its electricity running for decades - just like the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/voyager-probes-mission-history-farthest-movie-2018-08">Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes</a>, which launched 40 years ago and have left the solar system.</p><p>But with so many questions about Saturn still unanswered, NASA decided to keep Cassini in orbit there - and doom it to its fiery "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/cassini-grand-finale">Grand Finale</a>" death in September 2017. With less than 90 lbs of propellant left on Friday, the spacecraft plunged &#xa0;to its demise. The scientists chose to kill the probe this way to avoid the&#xa0;risk that it could run out of fuel and crash into one of Saturn's&#xa0;potentially life-fostering moons.&#xa0;</p><p>"Because of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-planetary-protection-officer-job-opening-2017-7">planetary protection</a>, and our desire to go back to Enceladus, and go back to Titan," Jim Green, the leader of NASA's planetary <keyword id="41551" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> program, said during a Wednesday press briefing, "we must protect those bodies for future exploration."</p><p><br>Extending the mission at Saturn helped Cassini's controllers to pile on discovery after discovery.</br></p><p>The probe had discovered jets of water shooting out of Enceladus in 2005. This was astonishing enough, but the extension allowed Cassini to "taste" the spray, confirming the moon hides a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saturns-moon-enceladus-cassini-ocean-life-global-salty-nasa-2015-9">salty ocean</a> below its ice-encrusted surface. Cassini also learned that Titan, too, may harbor its own <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10">habitable, subsurface seas</a>.</p><p>"To find that there's an ocean world so tiny with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saturn-encealdus-hydrothermal-vent-aliens-2017-4">a possibility of life</a>, so far from the sun - 10 times farther from the sun than the Earth - has opened up our paradigm of where you might look for life," <a href="https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Spilker/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Linda Spilker</a>, a Cassini project scientist and planetary scientist at NASA's JPL, said of Enceladus on Wednesday, "both within our own solar system and in the exoplanet systems beyond."</p><h2>Will there be a Cassini 2.0?</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Cassini is now dust falling through Saturn's clouds, and NASA has no other spacecraft there to study the planet, its rings, and fleet of moons.</p><p>But NASA is itching to fuel up more nuclear batteries, build a new spacecraft, and return to the planetary system.</p><p>"The observations by Cassini have been so remarkable for Enceladus and Titan, that ... we announced the inclusion of those two objects in our focused science program called <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/2017/05/05/nasa-receives-proposals-for-future-solar-system-mission" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">New Frontiers</a>," Green said on Wednesday. "Those proposals are in and currently under evaluation, and they do indeed include proposals to go back to Titan and Enceladus. We'll look through this competition and see what happens."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>New Frontiers has produced missions like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pluto-tail-new-horizons-comet-planet-hybrid-2016-5">New Horizons</a>, which flew by Pluto (and is on its way into the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/number-dwarf-planets-solar-system-2017-3">Kuiper Belt</a>); <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-jupiter-pictures-nasa-juno-2017-7">Juno</a>, which is currently orbiting Jupiter; and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-sampling-mission-2016-9">OSIRIS-REx</a>, a probe designed to suck up bits of Asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return that sample to Earth in 2023.<p>Spilker wrote and submitted one of the latest New Frontiers proposals with <a href="https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/people/m_cable" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Morgan Cable</a>, a fellow Cassini scientist. If approved, they'll get about $800 million, nuclear power supplies, and a rocket to make their mission happen.</p><p>"We've put together a proposal ... to go back to Enceladus with the kinds of instruments that you would need to address the questions about the habitability and 'is there life in the ocean of Enceladus?' The mission's called Enceladus Life Finder," Spilker told Business Insider.</p><p>She'll find out in December whether or not the proposal made the first cut, and gets a year to more deeply study and flesh out a mission plan. There are 11 competing proposals, about half of which also propose a return to Saturn.</p><p>"Certainly if my mission doesn't get selected, then I will be rooting for a mission to go back to the Saturn system," Spilker said. "Because as Cassini ends, part of me is saying 'I need to go back.'"</p><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:43%"></div></div><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:57%"></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/5-biggest-discoveries-nasa-saturn-cassini-huygens-2017-5">The 5 biggest discoveries from NASA's Cassini spacecraft that changed our view of space</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "asteroid bennu discoveries" and got 4 results

NASA cases Asteroid Bennu ahead of snatch and grab — finds six new secrets, including a possible void under the surface

Prabhjote Gill

NASA's asteroid-blasting spacecraft has stored over 2 pounds of alien dust and rock to bring back to Earth

Susie Neilson,Morgan McFall-J…

Apophis, the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid is speeding up — increasing the likelihood of it hitting Earth in 2068

Prabhjote Gill

NASA's groundbreaking Cassini probe is dead after 20 years of exploring Saturn

Dave Mosher

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