{"id":18115,"date":"2019-03-20T01:25:16","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T17:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/surprise-nasas-osiris-rex-probe-catches-asteroid-spewing-bits-into-space\/"},"modified":"2019-03-20T01:25:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T17:25:16","slug":"surprise-nasas-osiris-rex-probe-catches-asteroid-spewing-bits-into-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/surprise-nasas-osiris-rex-probe-catches-asteroid-spewing-bits-into-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise! NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx probe catches asteroid spewing bits into space"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_486753\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-486753\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-486753\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/190319-bennu-630x469.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/190319-bennu-630x469.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/190319-bennu-768x571.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/190319-bennu.jpg 1159w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-486753\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on Jan. 19 was created by combining two images taken by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Other image processing techniques were applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each image. (NASA \/ Goddard \/ Univ. of Arizona \/ Lockheed Martin Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has spotted something that hasn\u2019t been seen up close on an asteroid before: plumes of particles erupting into space.<\/p>\n<p>The mission\u2019s scientists shared pictures of the plumes as well as the unexpectedly rugged terrain on the asteroid, known as Bennu, today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. They also published a set of seven papers about their findings in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe discovery of plumes is one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career,\u201d Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, said in a news release. \u201cAnd the rugged terrain went against all of our predictions. Bennu is already surprising us, and our exciting journey there is just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits of material were first spotted floating up from Bennu on Jan. 6, shortly after OSIRIS-REx went into an orbit that brought about a mile away from the quarter-mile-wide asteroid. Lauretta and his colleagues determined that the particles didn\u2019t pose a hazard to the spacecraft, and they\u2019re continuing to analyze the plumes and their possible causes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t know the mechanism that is causing this right now,\u201d Lauretta said.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the particles were ejected clear of the asteroid and sailed out into space, 70 million miles from Earth, but the team tracked some particles that orbited Bennu as tiny satellites before returning to the asteroid\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p>The plumes make Bennu one of about a dozen active asteroids that exhibit comet-like behavior. OSIRIS-REx\u2019s scientists didn\u2019t expect to see such activity when the probe was launched in 2016.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Bennu is an active asteroid\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nmfS2Vb-B7o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>They also didn\u2019t expect to see so many boulders strewn across Bennu\u2019s surface. And that could be a problem.<\/p>\n<p>The main purpose of the OSIRIS-REx mission is to perform a touch-and-go maneuver, collect samples from the surface and put them in a capsule that would be delivered to Earth during a flyby in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>OSIRIS-REx\u2019s mission planners expected to identify a clear area measuring 82 feet wide as the target for the touch-and-go. But because the surface is so rugged, the team hasn\u2019t been able to find a hazard-free spot that wide. Now the team is looking for smaller areas to target, and adjusting its sampling plan to do a more precise touch-and-go maneuver.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThroughout OSIRIS-REx\u2019s operations near Bennu, our spacecraft and operations team have demonstrated that we can achieve system performance that beats design requirements,\u201d said Rich Burns, the mission\u2019s project manager at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cBennu has issued us a challenge to deal with its rugged terrain, and we are confident that OSIRIS-REx is up to the task.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the particle plumes and rocky terrain, OSIRIS-REx\u2019s scientists are reporting a change in Bennu\u2019s rotation rate, due to a cycle of heating and cooling known as the Yarkovsky-O\u2019Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect, or YORP effect. It turns out that Bennu\u2019s spin is speeding up at a rate of roughly one second every 100 years. Scientists have also detected a spot of magnetite on Bennu\u2019s surface, which serves as further evidence that liquid water once interacted with the rock that made up Bennu\u2019s parent body.<\/p>\n<p>OSIRIS-REx stands for \u201cOrigins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer.\u201d The probe is due to spend another two years studying Bennu and securing its sample from the surface. If all goes according to plan, it will begin the trip back to Earth in March 2021 and drop off the sample capsule during an Earth flyby in September 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on Jan. 19 was created by combining two images taken by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Other image processing techniques were applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each image. (NASA \/ Goddard \/ Univ. of Arizona \/ Lockheed Martin Photo) NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4365,1519,1526,190,1527],"class_list":["post-18115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroid","tag-asteroids","tag-bennu","tag-nasa","tag-osiris-rex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}