Medical News
Space
18 June 2019
Our most detailed image yet of BennuNASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin/PA Wire
By New Scientist staff and Press AssociationNASA has captured its closest and most detailed image yet of Bennu, a 78 billion-kilogram asteroid which approaches close to Earth every six years.
The image was taken on 13 June while the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was performing its second orbit around Bennu, at 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometres) from the asteroid’s surface. The OSIRIS-REx team observing Bennu say this is the closest orbit a spacecraft has ever made around a small planetary body in our solar system. It breaks the record the spacecraft set during its first orbit in December 2018, when it came as close as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometres) from the asteroid.
The image shows half of the rock brightened by sunlight and the other half in shadow. Bennu’s largest boulder, protruding from the southern hemisphere, is also visible.
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OSIRIS-REx – which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer – arrived at Bennu on 3 December 2018, after launching from Earth in September 2016. Some of its first findings were that Bennu is full of water, covered in boulders, and riddled with caves. Unlike the other asteroids we’ve been to, Bennu is full of hydrated minerals, which have water locked into their molecular structure.
Scientists believe that Bennu was originally part of a much larger asteroid, which it broke away from around 700 million to two billion years ago.
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