Watch NASA's OSIRIS-REx Rendezvous With an Asteroid: The spacecraft arrives at the tiniest [tr]

Popular Mechanics ^ | December 3, 2018 | Avery Thompson

[C19fan]

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was launched in 2016, but today it will begin to orbit its destination: the asteroid Bennu. When it does, Benniu will break the record for the smallest object ever orbited by a manmade spacecraft. NASA will begin a process of learning more about the small asteroids that reside in our part of the solar system.

You can watch the livestream of the arrival here:

[C19fan]

Bennu has a diameter of almost 500 meters or 1,600 feet. It weighs 60,000,000,000 kg or 132,277,357,310 lbs. /joke on/I hope the gravity of the spacecraft does not jar Bennu's orbit sending it crashing to Earth./joke off/

[Flick Lives]

Instead, OSIRIS-REx will perform something of a drive-by sample collection. The spacecraft will only touch the surface with its sample collection arm for a few seconds, hoovering up some rock samples before taking off again. This is something no one has ever done before, so it’ll be exciting to see how it works.

Sounds like a tricky trajectory to do a touch-and-go on an asteroid.

[Secret Agent Man]

For relative weight reference, it weights a tad more than 66 us Nomitz-class aircraft carriers, that clock in at about 100,000 tons apiece, or 2 billion pounds.

[C19fan]

I got the figure from Wikipedia. Surprised the estimated mass is so large.

[Mr. K]

I bet it ‘collides’ with it, in effect landing - then taking back off.

[cuban leaf]

Surprised the estimated mass is so large.

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One thing I learned manually clearing portions of my property in KY is that rocks are really heavy.:)

[dragnet2]

Final Approach to Bennu

This set of images shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s view of Bennu during the final phase of its journey to the asteroid. From Aug. 17 through Nov. 27 the spacecraft’s PolyCam camera imaged Bennu almost daily as the spacecraft traveled 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km) toward the asteroid. The final images were obtained from a distance of around 40 miles (65 km). During this period, OSIRIS-REx completed four maneuvers slowing the spacecraft’s velocity from approximately 1,100 mph (491 m/sec) to 0.10 mph (0.04 m/sec) relative to Bennu, which resulted in the slower approach speed at the end of the video. Date Taken: Aug. 17 to Nov. 27, 2018

[Mr. K]

The gravity is so weak that if you sneezed you would probably launch yourself right off.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks fieldmarshaldj. I've linked a YT vid in the oldest of these topics.

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• Live coverage of spacecraft arrival at asteroid December 3 [2018]
• NASA Spacecraft Begins Final Approach to Big Asteroid Bennu [2018]
• NASA asteroid probe may find clues to origins of life on Earth (Bennu, time capsule of our origins) [2016]
• NASA plans to launch study of asteroid that could destroy Earth (Bennu in 2135 scenario) [2016]

[BenLurkin]

Looks like the asteroid the Japanese visited

[BenLurkin]

Dude. They’re talking Russian.