In 2020 NASA's OSIRIS-REx will fly to the asteroid Bennu to collect a small sample and return home. NASA wrote in a new update that Bennu's surface is closer to a plastic ball pit than it is to a solid surface.
NASA wrote that the spaceship would have sunk into Bennu if it didn't back away immediately after grabbing dust and rock. If a person were to step onto Bennu they would feel very little resistance as if they were stepping into a pit of plastic balls.
Two years ago, the OSIRIS-REx tried to land. Two new papers published this week by the mission's researchers explain why.
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Dante Lauretta is a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx. We were shocked when we saw the images after the event.
The surface was soft and flowed away. I've never wanted to do anything else in my life, but it's probably not a good idea since I'm not anastrologer. We do not know a lot about these asteroids. PatrickMichel, an OSIRIS-REx scientist and director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Cte d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France, told NASA that "we're still at the beginning of understanding what these bodies are, because they The impact crater from the 2020 crash was 65 feet wide.
There was a wall of debris flying away from the sample side. It was terrifying for the operators.
Space.com says that Bennu is one of the most dangerous asteroids currently known because it would cause acontinent-wide disruption on our planet. NASA estimates that there will be a collision between the years 2175 and 2199, but it's not likely.