NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft touches down on asteroid Bennu
The mission marks the space agency's first landing on an asteroid.
Four years after launching from Earth, NASA's Osiris-Rex on Tuesday made a historic and brief landing on potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu, over 200 million miles away.
The spacecraft traveled all that way to perform a short touch-and-go maneuver with the goal of collecting a sample from the asteroid's surface and transporting it back to Earth for study.
The back-away burn is complete I'm now moving to a safe distance away from Bennu. pic.twitter.com/bXk2ufSneS
— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) October 20, 2020
We won't know until Wednesday whether Osiris-Rex succeeded in grabbing a space science souvenir, but on Tuesday, NASA TV reported the spacecraft's robotic sampling arm, named Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (Tagsam), did touch down on Bennu for about 15 seconds. During the brief contact, it performed what amounts to a cosmic pickpocketing maneuver.
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-osiris-r ... oid-bennu/
Pretty sure only Japan has successfully done this on Ryugu.
USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
Moderator: Dux
USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Re: USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
They're gonna stream video of the landing here, which is pretty sick: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
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Re: USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
DAS RITE!!!!!!
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Re: USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
I am pretty hyped about this.
One of the downsides of the Internet is that it allows like-minded people to form communities, and sometimes those communities are stupid.
Re: USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
Don't ruin it for me!
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Re: USA! USA! USA! Osiris-REx Lands on Bennu
It's very neat, and another example of the great things that have been happening in US space exploration in recent years.
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen