Want to see what things are like on a space rock tens of millions of miles from Earth? NASA has treated you.
Currently the near-Earth is asteroid Bennu is about 180 million miles (290 million kilometers) away, and is thus called a NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx. The probe will attempt a tricky goal this fall: cut a piece of space rock to bring home to Earth.
So for the big day, OSIRIS-REx is practicing its motions – and the resulting shots are just as cool as you’d expect from a piece of machine that flew 40 meters (40 meters) above a pound-covered space rock, according to a statement. That height is the equivalent of standing on the roof of an 11-story building and looking down.
Related: OSIRIS-REx: NASA’s asteroid sample return mission in images
But instead of toy cars and anti-human people, the camera on board OSIRIS-REx saw only rocks: large rocks and small rocks, sharp rocks and round rocks, dark rocks and light rocks. Stones as far as the mechanical eye can see.
These rocks surround what scientists on the OSIRIS-REx mission nicknamed the Nightingale sampling site, in a crater at 1,640 feet wide (500 m) Bennu’s northern hemisphere. On October 20, OSIRIS-REx will make a similar descent, but travel 130 feet further, ready to grab a souvenir from these rocks.
That sample will land here on Earth here in September 2023, if all goes according to plan. Scientists will then study the asteroid debris for clues about the history of the solar system and the role that carbon-rich space rocks such as Bennu may have played in the rise of life on Earth.
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