![]() Or, it could be placed on the surface of Apophis and act as a “tracking beacon,” Dr. New calculations put the odds at 1 in 1,750, a figure slightly higher than previously thought. It would also lead to better understanding of whether Apophis poses a future threat to Earth.Īfter Apophis, OSIRIS-REX might even have enough fuel to visit yet another asteroid. Recently NASA updated its forecast of the chances that the asteroid Bennu, one of the two most hazardous known objects in our solar system, will hit Earth in the next 300 years. ![]() NASA’s ongoing DART mission, which launched last month, is performing a not-too-dissimilar experiment by slamming into a small asteroid to see if we can change its orbit.ĭavide Farnocchia, from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the close pass of Apophis was an “amazing opportunity” to observe an asteroid of this size up close. Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) will rendezvous with asteroid Bennu in 2018. 2018/11/asteroid-missions-spacecraft-solar-system-osiris-rex-bennu.jpg. Application of Pseudo-Equinoctial Shaping to Near-Earth Asteroid Orbital Transfer 45. That's according to the most precise calculations of an asteroid's trajectory. 07/longwave-image-from-ceres-fm6-showing-heat-energy-radiated-from-earth.jpg. to Earth with a sample collected in October 2020 from the asteroid Bennu. “Is this a solid hunk of rock? Can we change this thing’s orbit? Could we destroy it, blow it up into tiny bits, if we had to take some drastic measures?” A potentially dangerous asteroid called Bennu has a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting Earth between now and the year 2300. NASAs DART spacecraft hits target asteroid in first planetary defense test. “We really need to understand what we’re dealing with,” said Jim Bell, an astronomer at Arizona State University who is not involved in the OSIRIS-REX mission. Indeed, NASA calculates a slight but not zero chance 1-in-2,700 of Bennu hitting our planet between 21 with the energy of more than a billion tons of TNT. By working out its mass, density and structure, scientists will know how spongy or hard the asteroid is, telling us how best to deal with similar objects. This departure sequence was a big step for the spacecraft. This in turn could inform a future mission to save Earth from Apophis or another asteroid. Asteroid Bennu has been hanging out with Earth for over a million years This thruster burn lasted for seven minutes.
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