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Asteroid Bennu and OSIRIS-REx spacecraft
Why is it in news?
- NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has discovered ingredients for water on a nearby skyscraper-sized asteroid, a rocky acorn-shaped object that may hold clues to the origins of life on the earth.
All about mission
Mission Objectives
OSIRIS-REx’s key science objectives include:
- Return and analyze a sample of Bennu’s surface
- Map the asteroid
- Document the sample site
- Measure the orbit deviation caused by non-gravitational forces (the Yarkovsky effect)
- Compare observations at the asteroid to ground-based observations.
Why Bennu?
- Bennu’s size, primitive composition, and potentially hazardous orbit make it one of the most fascinating and accessible NEOs and the ideal OSIRIS-REx target asteroid.
More about mission
- OSIRIS-Rex found traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules — part of the recipe for water and thus the potential for life — embedded in the asteroid’s rocky surface.
- The probe, on a mission to return samples from the asteroid to the earth for study, was launched in 2016.
- Bennu orbits the Sun at roughly the same distance as the earth.
- There is concern among scientists about the possibility of Bennu impacting the earth late in the 22nd century.
- Asteroids are among the leftover debris from the solar system’s formation some 4.5 billion years ago.
- Scientists believe asteroids and comets crashing into early earth may have delivered organic compounds and water that seeded the planet for life.
- Atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could provide key evidence to support that hypothesis.
Source
The Hindu,NASA