{"id":18387,"date":"2018-08-28T23:16:33","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T15:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-and-osiris-rex-spacecraft-spot-their-deep-space-targets\/"},"modified":"2018-08-28T23:16:33","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T15:16:33","slug":"nasas-new-horizons-and-osiris-rex-spacecraft-spot-their-deep-space-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-and-osiris-rex-spacecraft-spot-their-deep-space-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spot their deep-space targets"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_443322\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-443322\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-443322\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180828-ultima1-630x315.jpg\" alt=\"Ultima Thule as seen by New Horizons\" width=\"630\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180828-ultima1-630x315.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180828-ultima1-768x384.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180828-ultima1-1260x630.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-443322\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The picture on the left was created by adding 48 different exposures from the LORRI camera on NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe. The picture on the right has been processed to subtract the light from background stars, leaving an icy object known as Ultima Thule shining dimly in the crosshairs. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The next few months are due to bring two amazing interplanetary encounters: a rendezvous with an asteroid and a flyby past a mysterious icy object beyond Pluto on the solar system\u2019s edge. Over the past few days, we\u2019ve gotten our first fleeting peeks at both targets, and the view will only get better from now on.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the icy object known as Ultima Thule had its turn in the spotlight, roughly 4 billion miles from Earth. NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe is scheduled to zoom past and take close-up pictures on the night of Dec. 31-Jan. 1, but right now it\u2019s still more than 100 million miles away.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been more than three years since New Horizons made its memorable flyby of dwarf planet Pluto, but the set of 48 images captured on Aug. 16 demonstrate that the probe\u2019s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI, is up to snuff.<\/p>\n<p>Processing the imagery was a challenge. Researchers artificially subtracted the light from background stars to help Ultima Thule stand out, close to the location in the sky where they expected to find it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe image field is extremely rich with background stars, which makes it difficult to detect faint objects,\u201d Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist and LORRI principal investigator from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a news release. \u201cIt really is like finding a needle in a haystack. In these first images, Ultima appears only as a bump on the side of a background star that\u2019s roughly 17 times brighter, but Ultima will be getting brighter \u2013 and easier to see \u2013 as the spacecraft gets closer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"NASA reveals first images of Bennu asteroid\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pDBICniSFzw?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>Last week, NASA showed off the first pictures of a blip that\u2019s closer at hand, the asteroid Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has already traveled about 1.1 billion miles since its launch in 2016, and it\u2019s only about 1.4 million miles away from an encounter that\u2019s set for Dec. 3.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow that OSIRIS-REx is close enough to observe Bennu, the mission team will spend the next few months learning as much as possible about Bennu\u2019s size, shape, surface features, and surroundings before the spacecraft arrives at the asteroid,\u201d Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, said in a news release issued Friday. \u201cAfter spending so long planning for this moment, I can\u2019t wait to see what Bennu reveals to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As OSIRIS-REx closes in, it will study Bennu\u2019s surface composition in greater detail and position itself first for a series of flybys, and then a closer-in orbit. It\u2019s due to touch the surface for sample collection in 2020, and then head back to Earth to drop off the samples over the Utah desert in September 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The picture on the left was created by adding 48 different exposures from the LORRI camera on NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe. The picture on the right has been processed to subtract the light from background stars, leaving an icy object known as Ultima Thule shining dimly in the crosshairs. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI Photo) [&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":[2337,1519,1526,4809,2174,4810,1527],"class_list":["post-18387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2014-mu69","tag-asteroids","tag-bennu","tag-nasa-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons-probe","tag-osiris-rex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18387"}],"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=18387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}