NASA Plane Makes ‘Chaos’ on Asteroid Bennu

Scientists took pictures to look for traces on the asteroid Bennu.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, CAPE CANAVERAL – The spacecraft belonging to the American Space Agency (NASA) left a trail of chaos on the asteroid when it picked up last year’s debris to return to Earth. The picture was revealed Thursday (15/4).

Reporting from ABC News, Friday (16/4), spaceship Osiris-Rex do one last fly near asteroid Bennu on April 7 to take a photo of the disturbance left by the sample collection in October last year.

The place where the Osiris-Rex penetrated the asteroid’s surface, large boulders were blown away by pressurized nitrogen gas which was fired into the ground to stir up the dust-sucking material. A large boulder weighing one ton was thrown about 40 feet (12 meters).

The Osiris-Rex team carefully planned the final maneuvers to ensure the best possible shot. The photos were taken around noon to avoid shadows and better see the changes in the Bennu rock surface.

“These observations were not in the original mission plans, so we are excited to go back and document what we were doing,” said Dathon Golish of the University of Arizona in a statement.

Osiris-Rex will leave around Bennu next month and return to Earth. The probe was carrying a sample payload weighing two pounds (one kilogram) of value. Samples will arrive in 2023.

Carbon-rich asteroids orbiting the sun are 182 million miles (293 million kilometers) from Earth. By studying the fragments, scientists hope to better understand how our solar system planets form and how people should react if an asteroid harms Earth.

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