NASA’s robot is about to land on asteroid Bennu to unlock the secrets of life
NASA readies for a meeting between OSIRIS-REx and Bennu — and the asteroid has the building blocks of life.
Bennu and me, and spacecraft makes three
Bennu belongs to a class of asteroids know as rubble pileasteroids— which, as the name suggests, are loose amalgamations of smaller pieces, rather than one solid body.
New findings from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft suggest Bennu is stronger and denser in it’s outer layers than inside, like a creme-filled chocolate egg. This finding came from studying minor fluctuations in the gravitational field of the asteroid.
“If you can measure the gravity field with enough precision, that places hard constraints on where the mass is located, even if you can’t see it directly,” saidAndrew French, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Bennu is rotating faster over time, pushing carbon-rich material from its core closer to the surface.
This could be bad news for Bennu, as the finding suggests theasteroidmay fall apart within a million years.
An interplanetary game of marbles
Bennu also appears to be accompanied by tiny fragments of rock which break off the asteroid, following it around space. Some of these pieces of debris are just the size of marbles, researchers find. A fraction of these pebbles fall back to the asteroid, allowing researchers a chance to measure details in the gravitational field of theasteroid.
“The sporadic particle ejection events observed at Bennu were fortuitous in terms of gravity field determination. Many of the ejected particles were placed into temporary orbits about Bennu before reimpacting the surface or escaping from the asteroid,” researchers describe in an article published inScience Advances.
Bennu is considered a potentially hazardous asteroid, with a 1-in-2,700 chance of strikingEarthlate in the 22nd Century.
This article was originally published onThe Cosmic CompanionbyJames Maynard, founder and publisher of The Cosmic Companion. He is a New England native turned desert rat in Tucson, where he lives with his lovely wife, Nicole, and Max the Cat. You can read this original piecehere.
Astronomy News with The Cosmic Companionis also available as a weekly podcast, carried on all major podcast providers. Tune in every Tuesday for updates on the latest astronomy news, and interviews with astronomers and other researchers working to uncover the nature of the Universe.
Story byThe Cosmic Companion
Exploring the wonders of the Cosmos, one mystery at a time.Exploring the wonders of the Cosmos, one mystery at a time.
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