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If it’s out there, could we observe it soon?Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Some physicists believe that a fifth fundamental force could be the cause of some observational anomalies. A study is investigating ways to closely examine the trajectories of well-documented asteroids to hopefully detect anomalies that could provide evidence of such a force. Although the study shows no fifth force anomaly present in the asteroid Bennu, future explorations of the asteroid Apophis could provide an even better chance to find this elusive force—if it exists at all. According to the current Standard Model, four fundamental...

Bennu is a roughly 0.3-mile-wide (500 meters) asteroid that orbits in near-Earth space. Scientists suspect it's a chunk of a larger asteroid that broke off due to a collision farther out. Telescope observations and data collected by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft showed that Bennu has minerals that have been altered by water. Hence, scientists suspect the asteroid's parent body accreted ice that subsequently melted after it formed around 4.5 billion years ago...The team found various varieties of the aqueously altered minerals, including serpentine, smectite, carbonates, magnetite, sulfides, and phosphates. The minerals are present as individual particles and as crusts coating other...

Explanation: Back from asteroid 101955 Bennu, a 110-pound, 31-inch wide sample return capsule rests in a desert on planet Earth in this photo, taken at the Department of Defense Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City last Sunday, September 24. Dropped off by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, the capsule looks charred from the extreme temperatures experienced during its blistering descent through Earth's dense atmosphere. OSIRIS-Rex began its home-ward journey from Bennu in May of 2021. Delivered to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on September 25, the capsule's canister is expected to contain an uncontaminated sample of about a...

Explanation: The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's arm reached out and touched asteroid 101955 Bennu on October 20, 2020, after a careful approach to the small, near-Earth asteroid's boulder-strewn surface. Dubbed a Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event, the 30 centimeter wide sampling head (TAGSAM) appears to crush some of the rocks in this close-up recorded by the spacecraft's SamCam. The image was snapped just after surface contact some 321 million kilometers from planet Earth. One second later, the spacecraft fired nitrogen gas from a bottle intended to blow a substantial amount of Bennu's regolith into the sampling head, collecting the loose surface material. And...

Explanation: Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across. Frames used to construct this 3D anaglyph were taken by PolyCam on the OSIRIS_REx spacecraft on December 3, 2018 from a distance of about 80 kilometers. With a sample from the asteroid's rocky surface on board, OSIRIS_REx departed Bennu's vicinity in May of 2021 and is now enroute to planet Earth. The robotic spacecraft is scheduled to return the...

Explanation: This is what it looks like to punch an asteroid. Last month, NASA's robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx descended toward, thumped into, and then quickly moved away from the small near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu. The featured video depicts the Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event over a three-hour period. As the movie begins, the automated probe approaches the 500-meter, diamond-shaped, space rock as it rotates noticeably below. About 20 seconds into the video, Nightingale comes into view -- a touchdown area chosen to be relatively flat and devoid of large boulders that could damage the spaceship. At 34 seconds, the shadow of OSIRIS-REx's...

Explanation: What would it be like to land on an asteroid? Although no human has yet done it, NASA's robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to attempt to touch the surface of asteroid 101955 Bennu next week. The goal is to collect a sample from the nearby minor planet for return to Earth for a detailed analysis in 2023. The featured video shows what it looks like to descend toward the 500-meter diamond-shaped asteroid, based on a digital map of Bennu's rocky surface constructed from image and surface data taken by OSIRIS-REx over the past 1.5 years. The video begins by...

Explanation: Why does asteroid Bennu eject gravel into space? No one is sure. The discovery, occurring during several episodes by NASA's visiting OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, was unexpected. Leading ejection hypotheses include impacts by Sun-orbiting meteoroids, sudden thermal fractures of internal structures, and the sudden release of a water vapor jet. The featured two-image composite shows an ejection event that occurred in early 2019, with sun-reflecting ejecta seen on the right. Data and simulations show that large gravel typically falls right back to the rotating 500-meter asteroid, while smaller rocks skip around the surface, and the smallest rocks completely escape the low...

Astronomers have discovered more than 20,000 so-called near-Earth asteroids, or space rocks whose orbits pass within about 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit. Whereas comets erupt with long tails of gas, dust and debris when they streak near the sun, the vast majority of near-Earth asteroids appear inert. However, previous research found that a small number of asteroids, such as the asteroid 133P/Elst-Pizarro, could actively erupt with large amounts of dust and bits of rock — enough to create temporary clouds or comet-like tails that are visible from Earth-based telescopes. Much remains unknown about what drives such...

On a distant space rock being explored by a NASA probe, days are slowly shortening — and scientists are still trying to figure out why.Right now, the asteroid known as Bennu is spinning once every 4.3 hours. But scientists working on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to the space rock have used data gathered before the probe's arrival to calculate that Bennu's rotation rate is speeding up over time — by about 1 second each century."As it speeds up, things ought to change, and so we're going to be looking for those things and detecting this speed up gives us some clues...

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft aced its second major deep-space maneuver last Thursday (June 28), firing its engines to change its velocity by 37 mph (60 km/h), mission team members have confirmed. "The thruster burn put the spacecraft on course for a series of asteroid-approach maneuvers to be executed this fall that will culminate with the spacecraft's scheduled arrival at asteroid Bennu on Dec. 3," NASA officials wrote in a statement Tuesday (July 3). ... This material will make it to Earth in a special return capsule in September 2023. Scientists in labs around the world can then study the sample in...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx hi tech robotic explorer blasted off this evening in spectacular fashion from the Florida Space Coast on a ground breaking 7 year sampling trek to Asteroid Bennu and back to gather grains of 4.5 billion year old alien sand that could potentially reveal significant answers to the origins of life on Earth. The Earth departure for NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft began with an on time engine ignition from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket shortly before a crystal...

oom At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down. Once the helicopter line was detached and the helicopter had departed, the clean room team removed the capsule from its metal transport cradle. They loaded the capsule onto a cart and wheeled it into the hangar where a temporary clean room had been set up. In the hangar, the capsule...

NASA scientists have predicted there is a chance that a massive asteroid they have been tracking could smash into earth in the year 2182, potentially devastating an area the size of Texas. Bennu, a Near-Earth Object (NEO), orbits the earth roughly every six years and has been on the space agency’s radar since 1999 when it was first discovered. There have been three close encounters involving Bennu in 1999, 2005, and 2011, scientists said. On September 25, 2135, Bennu will make a close fly-by past Earth and has a miniscule chance through a pass through a “gravitational keyhole” that would...

NASA has revealed that while collecting samples from the asteroid Bennu in October of 2020, the spacecraft's sampler arm sank over a foot in the loosely packed surface layer, as if there was no resistance. The spacecraft narrowly avoided being swallowed by firing up its thrusters and moving away from the surface. University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences, Dante Lauretta, revealed that the "particles making up Bennu's exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that they act more like a fluid than a solid." Experts behind the mission likened the experience to jumping into...

OSIRIS REx Spacecraft Leaving Bennu Surface NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft leaving the surface of asteroid Bennu after collecting a sample. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab/SVS Scientists have learned something astonishing after analyzing data gathered when NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020. The spacecraft would have sunk into the asteroid had it not fired its thrusters to back away immediately after it grabbed its sample of dust and rock from Bennu’s surface. “Our expectations about the asteroid’s surface were completely wrong.” — Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx Unexpectedly, it turns out that the...

The chance of asteroid Bennu colliding with Earth by the year 2300 CE is a little higher than we thought. But you don't need to whip out your asteroid strike survival handbook just yet. According to new calculations based on data gathered by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which orbited and sampled the asteroid, the probability of Bennu colliding with our home planet in that timeframe is just 0.057 percent – or one chance in 1,750. The date we have to worry about the most is over 150 years away – 24 September 2182. On that date, Bennu will have a 0.037...

Data gathered during the years NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spent zipping around asteroid Bennu has allowed scientists to update the risk posed by this potentially hazardous near-Earth object. The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is currently en route to Earth, carrying surface samples it collected from asteroid Bennu. From December 2018 to May 2021, the NASA spacecraft studied the gigantic rubble pile from every angle, measuring its size, shape, mass, composition, spin, orbital trajectory, and other important characteristics. Bennu is a primitive carbonaceous asteroid, so by studying this object, scientists can make inferences about what our solar system was like during its formative period. But...

Two days after touching down on asteroid Bennu, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission team received on Thursday, Oct. 22, images that confirm the spacecraft has collected more than enough material to meet one of its main mission requirements -- acquiring at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of the asteroid's surface material.

Make sure to go to the link and click on the hotlink highlighted as "Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event" for a video of the touchdown. A photo sequence is also shown in the last hotlink in the Explanation or by clicking on the image at the link. Explanation: On October 20, after a careful approach to the boulder-strewn surface, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's arm reached out and touched asteroid Bennu. Dubbed a Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event, the 30 centimeter wide sampling head (TAGSAM) appears to crush some of the rocks in this snapshot. The close-up scene was recorded by the spacecraft's SamCam...