The asteroid Bennu just keeps getting more bizarre.
When NASA decided to send a probe to land on space rock and bring back samples, it chose Bennu for its apparent surface – the perfect landing ground. But once the Osiris-Rex spacecraft traveled 200 million miles to Bennu, the images behind it revealed a landscape engulfed in rocks and rocky areas.
Eventually NASA chose the flatest place for it to land, and a touch-and-go operation to cut the material went smoothly last month. But then came the next surprise: Bennu’s rock crashed under the spacecraft as soon as it touched the surface and became surprisingly soft.
The probe exploded nitrogen to send rocks and dust around – that way it could catch some of its sample-storage equipment. But so far, scientists have found a lot of material when they drilled that the dust and rock sample was exposing the storage-collection tool so that precious alien dust could leak into space.
They managed to stove the sample before losing too much, but in the shock it was not final. Recently, researchers at the University of Colorado, based on data collected over two years by Osiris-Rex, have concluded that it is orbiting Bennu that the planet is probably hollow.
Daniel Shisher, a professor in the university’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, who led the research, said: “It’s as if there’s a void in its center, within which you can fill in some football fields.”
What’s more, Bennu will be able to tear himself to pieces.
‘The whole thing is flying’
Osiris-Rex is orbiting Bennu, while the gravity of the asteroid has been measured by an investigation. At the same time, Bennu also carved marble-sized stone strips away from its surface. Those orbits entered orbit around the asteroid, then some of them fell back to its surface. By discovering their motions, the mission managers were able to calculate Bennu’s gravitational force.
Gravity comes from the mass, so these two sets of data allowed the team of skiers to calculate how the material is distributed inside the asteroid.
Find their findings published in the journal Science Advances on October 8 (shortly before the landing of Osiris-Rex) show that it is correct. Bennu’s rotating forced force seems to be pushing its contents towards the outer surface. Some thin parts of the asteroid are at the equator of its bead.
Bennu completes one rotation every four hours, and it’s just getting faster.
“You can imagine that in maybe a million years or less, the whole thing flew,” Shishares said.
Bennu can keep secrets about the origin of life
Picture of OSIRIS-Rex in orbit around the asteroid Bennu.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Conceptual Image Lab
According to Dante Lure Retana, chief investigator of Osiris-Rex, Benue is one of the most potentially dangerous asteroids in our solar system, having a “non-neglected chance” of collapsing on Earth during the 22nd century. However its fragility can be good news.
Studying Bennu will help future scientists plan to rotate the planet, if it ever threatens to affect the Earth. Research could also reveal new details about the life of the asteroids – the ancient pellets of rocks that connected it to the rest of the bits that did not enter the planets. Such things can unravel the mysteries of how our solar system was formed and how life on earth came into being.
“We hope to find out what happened to these asteroids over time, which could give us a better understanding of how these tiny asteroids, which have changed over millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of years, could change.” “Our findings exceeded our expectations.”
Osiris-Rex has collected aplagia of data which scientists have not yet combed. The collected specimen is expected to return to Earth in 2023.
The animation shows OSIRIS-REx releasing its sample return capsule for a touchdown in the Utah Desert on September 24, 2023.
NASA / Goddard / CI Lab
Assuming the capsule, which has protected the sample for several years as planned, parachutes into the Utah Desert, NASA has said it will save a fraction of the alien rock for future study with undeveloped technologies. The agency will send the rest to laboratories around the world.
“This is all about understanding our origins, addressing some of the basic questions we ask ourselves as humans,” L’Retta said before landing on the understanding Siris-Rex asteroid. “Where did we come from? And we are alone in the universe?”
