![]() NASA is to conduct an experiment using this technique with an asteroid called Didymos in 2022, sending the Double Asteroid Redirect Test spacecraft to nudge it off its orbit. If an asteroid appeared likely to collide with Earth, humanity could try to deflect it into an orbit that misses the planet. Johnson said about 40 percent of the near-Earth asteroids the size of Bennu remain to be found. Its orbit crosses Earth’s, and as soon as it was discovered in 1999, planetary scientists could see that it posed a potential danger to our planet.īut a greater danger could come from the asteroids not yet seen. But they also chose it in part because Bennu is what is known as a near-Earth asteroid. Mission managers chose Bennu in part because it appears to be laden with the types of carbon molecules that may have provided the building blocks of life on Earth. OSIRIS-REX’s observations also enabled calculations of the small forces imparted on Bennu caused by the heating and cooling of the surface. This let them improve the estimate of Bennu’s position in 2135 by a factor of 20. Farnocchia and his colleagues were able to precisely pin down the asteroid’s orbit. ![]() When the spacecraft was in orbit around Bennu, Dr. The spacecraft left Bennu three months ago and is now headed back toward Earth to drop off samples of rock and dirt it collected from the asteroid for detailed laboratory study by scientists. The improved probabilities come courtesy of NASA’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft, which spent two years studying Bennu up close.
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