Global Model of Asteroid Bennu
Video source record: https://images.nasa.gov/details/GSFC_20200226_M4795_BennuGlobal
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Summary
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a spinning top. This major validation, however, was accompanied by a major surprise. Scientists had expected Bennu’s surface to consist of fine-grained material like a sandy beach, but instead OSIRIS-REx was greeted by a rugged world littered with boulders – the size of cars, the size of houses, the size of football fields. The main science goal of OSIRIS-REx is to briefly touch down on Bennu and collect a sample for return to Earth, but the asteroid’s unexpected roughness could pose a hazard to the spacecraft. Areas for safely touching down are fewer and smaller than anticipated, and OSIRIS-REx will have to navigate to them with unprecedented accuracy. The 3D animations on this page were created using laser altimetry data and imager
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Details
- Source collection: NASA
- License: Public Domain (US Government)
- Category: Space
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Academic references
- Primary source record: https://images.nasa.gov/details/GSFC_20200226_M4795_BennuGlobal
- Topic lookup: Google Scholar search for “Global Model of Asteroid Bennu”