CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – A NASA spacecraft left a mess at an asteroid when it grabbed a cargo of debris to return to Earth, new photos revealed Thursday.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft made a final flight of the asteroid Bennu on April 7 to take photos of the disturbance left behind by the October collection.
A depression is visible where Osiris-Rex penetrates the surface of the asteroid. Rock blocks were hurled by the nitrogen gas under pressure fired at the ground to dust up material for vacuuming, and by the spacecraft’s breakaway plug. One rock of 1 ton was estimated to have been thrown 12 meters.
The Osiris-Rex team carefully planned the final transition to ensure the best shots. The photos were taken at noon to avoid shadows and to better see the changes on Bennu’s rocky surface.
“These observations were not in the original mission plan, so we were excited to go back and document what we did,” University of Arizona Dathon Golish said in a statement.
Osiris-Rex will leave Bennu’s environment next month and return to Earth with his precious 2 kilogram (1 kilogram) monster charge. It will arrive in 2023.
The asteroid orbiting the sun, rich in carbon, is 293 million kilometers from Earth. By studying pieces of it, scientists hope to better understand how our solar system’s planets formed and how humans should react when an asteroid endangers the earth.
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