NASA Releases Incredible Video of OSIRIS-REx Tagging Asteroid – Mysterious Dark Patches Puzzle Team:
These images were captured over an approximate three-hour period – the imaging sequence begins approximately one hour after the orbit departure maneuver and ends approximately two minutes after the back-away burn. In the middle of the sequence, the spacecraft slews, or rotates, so that NavCam 2 looks away from Bennu, toward space. OSIRIS-REx then performs a final slew to point the camera (and the sampling arm) toward the surface again.
As the spacecraft nears site Nightingale, the sampling arm's shadow comes into view in the lower part of the frame. Shortly after, the sampling head impacts site Nightingale (just outside the camera's field of view to the upper right) and fires a nitrogen gas bottle, which mobilizes a substantial amount of the sample site's material. Several seconds later, the spacecraft performs a back-away burn and the sampling arm's shadow is visible against the disturbed surface material.
The team continues to investigate what caused the extremely dark areas visible in the upper and middle parts of the frame. The upper area could be the edge of the depression created by the sampling arm, a strong shadow cast by material lofted from the surface, or some combination of the two. Similarly, the middle dark region that first appears in the lower left of the image could be a depression caused by one of the spacecraft thrusters as it fired, a shadow caused by lofted material, or a combination of both.
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NASA reports, via NASA, that OSIRIS-REx is leaving Bennu.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx completed its last flyover of Bennu around 6 a.m. EDT (4 a.m. MDT) April 7 and is now slowly drifting away from the asteroid; however, the mission team will have to wait a few more days to find out how the spacecraft changed the surface of Bennu when it grabbed a sample of the asteroid.
The OSIRIS-REx team added this flyby to document surface changes resulting from the Touch and Go (TAG) sample collection maneuver Oct. 20, 2020. "By surveying the distribution of the excavated material around the TAG site, we will learn more about the nature of the surface and subsurface materials along with the mechanical properties of the asteroid," said Dr. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona.
During the flyby, OSIRIS-REx imaged Bennu for 5.9 hours, covering more than a full rotation of the asteroid. It flew within 2.1 miles' (3.5 kilometers) distance to the surface of Bennu – the closest it's been since the TAG sample collection event.
Just to mention, the survey and selection of a sampling site was one of the recent "citizen science" projects.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @02:55AM
In b4 the N/\S/\!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday November 06 2020, @03:59PM
That made a serious poof of debris. Did it hit all that hard or was there just a bunch of loose material?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Friday November 06 2020, @04:49PM
Once space travel is easy, I wonder if they'll be puzzled by our historical fascination with random debris and lifeless asteroids. "It's a rock. There's millions just like it. Why would anyone want to video and study it?"
Futurama [fandom.com] had some perspective on the moon.
Disclaimer: I get it now. It's a rock in space that's been who-knows-where. It's cool, it's different, and we could learn any number of things by studying it.