{"id":106309,"date":"2021-05-11T15:34:14","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T10:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=106309"},"modified":"2021-05-13T10:48:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T05:18:18","slug":"nasas-osiris-rex-mission-to-begin-return-from-asteroid-bennu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nasas-osiris-rex-mission-to-begin-return-from-asteroid-bennu\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA&#8217;s &#8220;OSIRIS-REx Mission&#8221; to begin return from &#8220;Asteroid Bennu&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>What is the News?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">NASA\u2019s <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nasas-osiris-rex-mission-to-begin-return-from-asteroid-bennu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OSIRIS-REx Mission<\/a> will depart from asteroid Bennu and start its two-year-long journey back to Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><strong>About OSIRIS-REx Mission:<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>OSIRIS-REx <\/strong>stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer.<\/li>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\"><strong>The mission was launched<\/strong> in 2016.<\/yoastmark> It was the first U.S. mission to successfully collect a sample from an asteroid.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Aim: <\/strong>To travel to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Instruments<\/strong>: The spacecraft contains five instruments meant to explore Bennu. This includes cameras, a spectrometer and a laser altimeter.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Duration<\/strong>: The mission is essentially a seven-year-long. <yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\">The mission will conclude when at least 60 grams of samples are delivered back to the Earth.<\/yoastmark><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Asteroid Bennu:<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\"><strong>Asteroid Bennu <\/strong>is named after an Egyptian deity.<\/yoastmark> It is as tall as the Empire State Building. It is located about 200 million miles away from the Earth.<\/li>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\"><b>A <\/b>team from the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team in 1999 <strong>discovered<\/strong> the asteroid.<\/yoastmark><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Characteristics of Asteroid Bennu:<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Firstly, Bennu is a B-type asteroid. <\/strong>It contains significant amounts of carbon and various other minerals.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Because of its high carbon content, <\/strong>the asteroid reflects about 4% of the light that hits it. The reflection is very low when compared with Venus(reflects about 65% of the light). Earth reflects about 30%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Secondly, Around 20-40% of Bennu\u2019s interior <\/strong>is empty. This means that it was formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system\u2019s creation which is roughly around 4.5 billion years old.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lastly, Bennu is classified as a Near-Earth Object (NEO). <\/strong>So, it has a possibility to strike the Earth in the next century between the years 2175 and 2199.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>NEOs<\/strong> are comets and asteroids nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets orbits. This allows them to enter the Earth\u2019s neighbourhood.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Why study Asteroid Bennu?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\"><strong>Asteroid Bennu <\/strong>is considered to be an ancient asteroid.<\/yoastmark> Further, it has not gone through a lot of composition-altering changes for billions of years. This means that below the surface of Bennu the chemicals and rocks lie in the same form since the birth of the solar system.<\/li>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\"><strong>Therefore, <\/strong>scientists and researchers are interested in studying this asteroid.<\/yoastmark> As it might give them clues about the origins of the solar system, the sun, the Earth and the other planets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>What are Asteroids?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Asteroids <\/strong>are rocky objects that orbit the Sun. They are much smaller than planets, so they are also called <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">minor planets<\/span>. <yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\">According to NASA, there are around 994,383 known asteroids.<\/yoastmark><\/li>\n<li><strong>Scientists study asteroids to:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><yoastmark class=\"yoast-text-mark\">Asteroids were formed at the same time as other objects in the solar system.<\/yoastmark> So, the scientists will <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">look for information <\/span>about the formation and history of planets and the sun<\/li>\n<li><strong>Another reason for tracking them<\/strong> is to look for potentially hazardous asteroids.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-as-nasas-osiris-rex-begins-journey-back-from-asteroid-the-significance-of-its-mission-asteroid-bennu-7309820\/\"><strong>Indian Express<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"8mmG8xf790\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/planet-nine\/\">Explained: What is Planet Nine?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Explained: What is Planet Nine?&#8221; &#8212; Free UPSC IAS Preparation For Aspirants\" src=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/planet-nine\/embed\/#?secret=aq9tOfMlwy#?secret=8mmG8xf790\" data-secret=\"8mmG8xf790\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the News? NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx Mission will depart from asteroid Bennu and start its two-year-long journey back to Earth. About OSIRIS-REx Mission: OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer. The mission was launched in 2016. It was the first U.S. mission to successfully collect a sample from an asteroid. Aim:&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nasas-osiris-rex-mission-to-begin-return-from-asteroid-bennu\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">NASA&#8217;s &#8220;OSIRIS-REx Mission&#8221; to begin return from &#8220;Asteroid Bennu&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1351,1310,1738,9],"tags":[1425],"class_list":["post-106309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-daily-news","category-daily-news-updates","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-st_4","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}