Asteroids Archives

August 7, 2022August 7, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Watch OSIRIS-REx's Complex Orbital Path Around Bennu in This Cool Animation

OSIRIS-REx mission timeline. Credit: NASA.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft conducted a two-year reconnaissance and sample collection at the asteroid Bennu, providing crucial data about the 500-meter-wide potentially hazardous rubble pile/space rock. When OSIRIS-REx arrived on Dec. 3, 2018, it needed some tricky navigation and precise maneuvers to make the mission work.

Experts at NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio created an amazing visualization of the path the spacecraft took during its investigations. A short film called “A Web Around Asteroid Bennu” highlights the complexity of the mission, and the film is being shown at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a festival honoring standout works of computer animated storytelling.

July 26, 2022July 26, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

OSIRIS-REx Would Have Sunk Deep into Asteroid Bennu if it Tried to Land

A pair of studies published in Science and Science Advances have helped identify that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft would have sunk into the asteroid Bennu had the spacecraft not fired its thrusters immediately after collecting samples from the surface of the small planetary body in October 2020. The respective studies examined the loosely packed exterior of Bennu, comparing its surface to stepping into a pit of plastic balls that people of all ages enjoy. The paper in Science was led by Dr. David Lauretta, Principal Investigator of OSIRIS-REx and a Regents Professor at the University of Arizona, and the paper in Science Advances was led by Dr. David Walsh, a member of the OSIRIS-REx team from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The Sun is Eroding Asteroids

The asteroid Bennu from a distance of 24 km (15) miles captured by the PolyCam on OSIRIS-REx. The spacecraft has detected water on Bennu. On the bottom right in the termination line is the large boulder. The image is a mosaic constructed of 12 images. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

Asteroids have been around since early solar system times. However, just because they are ancient bits of history doesn’t mean they don’t change. They collide, they break apart, and now, it turns out their surfaces can erode. That’s due to heat from the Sun. It fractures surface rocks on asteroids and causes what’s called “surface regeneration”. Over time, the cracked and shattered materials can scatter across the surface or even get ejected into space.

How do we know about this erosion? Planetary scientists working on the OSIRIS-REx mission noticed that the surface of asteroid Bennu has rock fractures caused by solar heating. They found that it takes the Sun only about 10,000 to 100,000 years to break up surface rocks on asteroids. This results in a young surface topography on a piece of solar system real estate that’s billions of years old.

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022 by Evan Gough

Uh Oh, NASA is Reviewing Psyche and May Terminate the Mission

NASA's mission to asteroid 16 Psyche has been delayed. Now a review panel is examining the delay. Credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA is reviewing its mission to visit the asteroid 16 Psyche. The Administration has convened a 15-member review board to examine the mission and its failure to meet the scheduled 2022 launch. The review began on July 19, and the board will present their findings to NASA and JPL in late September.

July 19, 2022July 19, 2022 by Evan Gough

We’ll be Building Self-Replicating Probes to Explore the Milky Way Sooner Than you Think. Why Haven’t ETIs?

An early NASA concept of an interstellar space probe. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

The future can arrive in sudden bursts. What seems a long way off can suddenly jump into view, especially when technology is involved. That might be true of self-replicating machines. Will we combine 3D printing with in-situ resource utilization to build self-replicating space probes?

One aerospace engineer with expertise in space robotics thinks it could happen sooner rather than later. And that has implications for SETI.

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by Evan Gough

Two Spacecraft Could Work Together to Capture an Asteroid and Bring it Close to Earth for Mining

Mining asteroids might be necessary for humanity to expand into the Solar System. But what effect would asteroid mining have on the world's economy? Credit: ESA.

Humanity seems destined to expand into the Solar System. What exactly that looks like, and how difficult and tumultuous the endeavour might be, is wide open to speculation. But there are some undeniable facts attached to the prospect.

We need materials to build infrastructure, and getting it all into space from Earth is not realistic. (Be quiet, space elevator people.)

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

JWST Also Looked Inside the Solar System, at Jupiter and its Moons

Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

After the ‘big reveal’ earlier this week of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full color images and spectra of the universe, the science team has now released data from closer to home. One stunning shot includes Jupiter and its moons, and there are also data from several asteroids. These latest data are actually just engineering images, designed to test JWST’s ability to track solar system targets, as well as test out how the team can produce images from the data. The quality and detail in these test images have excited the mission scientists.

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

The Most Threatening Asteroid Just got Downgraded to “Harmless”. No Impact in 2052

It’s comforting to know that there are people who are literally paid to watch the night sky to ensure that at least we’ll be informed if an asteroid will hit the Earth. Technology and near-Earth surveys have become advanced enough that the likelihood of a planet-killer-sized asteroid coming out of nowhere, as is so prevalent in modern media depictions, is extremely unlikely. Even smaller ones, which would only wipe out a city or part of a continent, get enough attention to tell if they pose a threat or not. And in advance of Asteroid Day 2022, which happened on June 30th, ESA is proud to announce they were able to remove one of the most threatening asteroids from their potential impact list.

June 21, 2022June 21, 2022 by Evan Gough

Could We Use Mars as a Base for Asteroid Mining?

A composite image of Mars and its two moons, Phobos (foreground) and Deimos (background). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The earliest mention of asteroid mining might be in a story from 1898 titled “Edison’s Conquest of Mars,” by Garrett Serviss. In that story, Martians attack Earth, killing tens of thousands and destroying New York City. Earth retaliates and sends an armada to Mars. While travelling, the armada comes across an asteroid that the Martians are mining. The asteroid is a rubble pile of gold nuggets.

A conversation breaks out among the crew.

“Phew! Won’t we be rich?” exclaimed a voice.

“How are we going to dig it and get it back to earth?” asked another.

“Carry it in your pockets,” said one.

“No need of staking claims here,” remarked another. “There is enough for everybody.”

Their conversation was a prescient hint of things to come.

June 20, 2022June 20, 2022 by Matt Williams

Samples of Asteroid Ryugu Contain More Than 20 Amino Acids

Artist's impression of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft touching down on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu. Credit: JAXA/Akihiro Ikeshita?

In 2014, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) dispatched its Hayabusa2 spacecraft to rendezvous with 162173 Ryugu, a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) that periodically passes close to Earth. In 2018, this sample-return mission reached Ryugu and spent the next year and a half studying its surface and obtaining samples from its surface and subsurface. By 2020, these samples made it back to Earth, where scientists began analyzing them in the hopes of learning more about the early history of the Solar System and answering key questions about the origins of life.

Earlier this year, the first results of the analysis showed that Ryugu is (as expected) rich in carbon, organic molecules, and volatiles (like water) and hinted at the possibility that it was once a comet. Based on a more recent analysis, eight teams of Japanese researchers (including one from JAXA) recently announced that Ryugu carries strains of no less than 20 different amino acids -the building blocks of DNA and life itself! These findings could provide new insight into how life is distributed throughout the cosmos and could mean that it is more common than previously thought.