If you ever pictured yourself standing boldly on the aerofoil of an asteroid , like Bruce Willis inArmageddon , peradventure imagine again . asteroid have very small gravitational force for a get-go and if you picked one like Bennu , you ’d sink just like in a orb nether region . NASA’sOSIRIS - REx sample collectiondidn’t come across a solid surface but a informal assembling of debris , grant to fresh enquiry .
NASA ’s OSIRIS - Rex study this heavenly body for 505 days and even flew down to its surface to pick up a sample . But the collection go a bit too well . It appears that its collecting branch penetrated about half a m ( 1.5 base ) into the asteroid within seconds of rival down .
" It turn out that the particles cause up Bennu ’s outside are so generally jam-packed and lightly bound to each other that they act more like a fluid than a solid , " UArizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta , the mission ’s principal investigator , said in astatement .
Lauretta is the lead author of a paper key the unusual body of the control surface of Bennu put out inScience . A second composition , published inScience Advances , was head by Kevin Walsh , a member of the OSIRIS - REx skill squad with Southwest Research Institute in Boulder .
The spacecraft risk being swallowed whole by the asteroid as it pull in the sample . As OSIRIS - male monarch touched the ground in October 2020 , pebble began fly about . The timely ignition of its pusher kept it good and led to the founding of a puzzling large volcanic crater 8 meters ( 26 substructure ) across .
" By the time we fire our thrusters to leave the surface we were still plunging into the asteroid , " said Ron Ballouz , a former postdoctoral investigator at UArizona ’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who is now based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel , Maryland .
image taken during and after the sample collection line of descent , together with hundreds of simulation , revealed that Bennu is a deal less solid than antecedently expected . And this determination might have important consequences for planetary defense strategies .
Bennu is a Near - Earth Object thatmight impact Earth next century . Given how loose it is , the effect of the atmosphere would be unlike compared to a more substantial asteroid .
OSIRIS - REx will fork up its precious sample to Earth next September and will then persist in towardsanother severe object , asteroid Apophis , which it will hand in 2029 .
