If all goes well it will happen. Japan did this once .
It worked as planned , the material will be here on Earth in 2023
Are there any real pictures of this asteroid ? all i see are simulations…
takes 18 minutes to send a message there so if the camera saw something it would be too late to change the plans. Maybe they took still photos and we will see them at some point.
The Atlantic has amazing pictures. I would not call it a simulation, it is of course manipulated, but based on real data. Those seem to be “real” pictures from the Japanese Hayabusa mission to the asteroid Ryugu two years ago, but enhanced as well.
I’m not quite sure what you mean. NASA, has provided a mix of simulated images and real pictures. Here is a picture of Bennu, taken from about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away:
Now, technically that’s not “a” picture; it’s a mosaic of twelve smaller images that have been joined together to form a single large image. But that’s pretty common, and I don’t think it makes that picture a “simulation”.
Either directly from NASA, or by way of Wikipedia or Phil “The Bad Astronomer” Plait, there are lots of other pictures. It’s a very strange looking little world-let. (It’s only about a third of a mile wide.)
Ah, that’s more like it !
Thanks.
i expect i meant animations, or even “dramatisations”.
“Roc Saxum”!
NASA considers Bennu the most dangerous asteroid for the Earth. It is possible that in the next 150 years, the asteroid may come close to the Earth. According to experts, Bennu has a 1 in 2700 chance of hitting Earth between 2175 and 2195.
Only ten days until the sample is due to land in Utah. So I figure to bump the thread in anticipation.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2023/teams-watch-weather-as-osiris-rex-returns-asteroid-sample
A question occured to me: Did they ever figure out exactly how massive the sample is?
From the NASA article you linked, it seems to be about half a pound? I’m sure they’ve got a more precise value, but they didn’t mention it.
I was hoping for a more exact value, but perhaps they don’t have one. As I recall, when the sample was first grabbed, there was a procedure that would weigh it. But then they realized that the sample grabber was leaking bits of sample, so they skipped the weighing procedure and rushed to get it stowed in the container.
I thought possibly they would have figured out the mass from how the spacecraft reacts to the rockets.
According to this article, it has 250 ±101 g of asteroid. Yeah, that’s about half a pound. Pretty big error bar.
Four days to go.
From another thread: successful landing:
It was pretty neat that it landed already wrapped in a nice plastic bag. How convenient!
It’s a great accomplishment and will be interesting to see what it found.
They have opened the lid, and found some hopefully asteroid dust. They still need to open the inner canister.
Brian