Here It Is: The Spectacular Footage of NASA Touching Down on an Asteroid

www.sciencealert.com ^ | 22 OCTOBER 2020 | MICHELLE STARR

[Don Corleone]

Too bad Pelosi and Schumer didn’t make the trip.

[rktman]

Did Mike Rowe have a crew standing by to do the filming?

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

NOVA covered it about 3 hours later.
To quote Lee Greenwood:
I’m proud to be an American.
[earworm]

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[HighSierra5]

Me too. What other country can achieve this? Those people at JPL are awesome. That’s something to be proud of in California.

[bigbob]

The entire sequence that loop was extracted from can be viewed here:

https://www.asteroidmission.org/

Bear in mind this happened 200 million miles away, which means it takes 18 minutes for radio signals to travel one way. Everything was done under autonomous control by the spacecraft that has been mapping the asteroids surface and creating a Hazard Map since 2018. The actual TAG (touch and go) sample collection occurred in less than 10 seconds as the “reverse vacuum cleaner” contacted the surface.

A great accomplishment by NASA and Lockheed Martin, along with the University of Arizona.

You can download the hi res gif file also. I stepped through it frame by frame, but it will be a couple of days until they perform a moment of inertia experiment to determine how much sample was acquired. It’s possible to make up to two additional attempts if necessary.

[CodeToad]

“Did Mike Rowe have a crew standing by to do the filming?”

Lol.

“This little fella has a dirty job to do, but it does it quickly, within seconds, and never complains...”

[bigbob]

Nothing against JPL but this was NASA Goddard, and the control room where Tuesdays live broadcast and OSIRIS-REx operations are managed from is at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.

[M Kehoe]

Cool.

I still want some gold, platinum and dilythum crystals.

5.56mm

[rktman]

I hear the dems didn’t vote on it. :-)

[Swordmaker]

The surface of Bennu looks like the pile of residue left when they broke up the asphalt street in front of my house in preparation for resurfacing it a few years ago. I had heard that the color of the moon was actually about the same color one tone of asphalt. This confirms it.

[Red Badger]

Asteroids is where God put the leftovers........................

[TheConservativeTejano]

Me too. What other country can achieve this? Those people at JPL are awesome. That’s something to be proud of in California.

Partner, this is so great and it goes to show that we should never doubt our basic instincts.

[DoubleNickle]

Japan’s JAXA did it 2 years ago with the Hayabusa2 mission — the samples are due to return this December.

[PIF]

What other country can achieve this?

—
Japan

[SunkenCiv]

B-b-b-b-b-b-b-Bennu and the jets. Thanks Army Air Corps.

[SunkenCiv]

NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft unfurled its robotic arm Oct. 20, 2020, and in a first for the agency, briefly touched an asteroid to collect dust and pebbles from the surface for delivery to Earth in 2023.

This well-preserved, ancient asteroid, known as Bennu, is currently more than 200 million miles (321 million kilometers) from Earth. Bennu offers scientists a window into the early solar system as it was first taking shape billions of years ago and flinging ingredients that could have helped seed life on Earth.

OSIRIS-REx Touches Asteroid Bennu

[minnesota_bound]

Pickup Oct. 20, 2020, delivery to Earth in 2023.
That is a bit slow. Maybe UPS or Amazon can do it quicker.

[JimRed]

Now, the lander has to take off and return to Earth. But will the small push it gives the asteroid while leaving affect Bennu’s orbit? Might it redirect the asteroid to a collision course with Earth? Unintended consequences!

But, if it does so, it proves that hazardous asteroids can be easily redirected if they threaten Earth and are discovered in time.