


Using that information, the staff behind the brand new analysis had been in a position to fine-tune their understanding of the space rock’s location and motion for practically two and a half years. The spacecraft’s go to to the asteroid culminated in October 2020, when OSIRIS-REx snatched a sample of Bennu to stash away. In May, the spacecraft and its valuable cargo bid farewell to the asteroid and turned again for Earth, the place OSIRIS-REx will deposit the pattern capsule in September 2023. The supply will give scientists the uncommon alternative to review asteroid materials utilizing all the subtle gear terrestrial laboratories have to supply.īut scientists needn’t get their arms on that pattern materials to dig into the spacecraft’s two and a half years of observations. Add in astronomers’ work observing Bennu from the bottom earlier than OSIRIS-REx was even an thought and scientists have about 20 years of knowledge monitoring a single space rock. Scientists’ fashions of asteroid trajectories all the time embody a point of uncertainty, since a mess of forces tug at a space rock because it rattles across the internal solar system.
