Skip to main content

NASA first explorer spacecraft took off to asteroid to bring back samples

Round trip, the spacecraft is expected to travel for more than 6 billion kilometers before the mission’s end in 2023.


 NASA first explorer of its kind has been flied off on a seven-year quest mission, following after a big, black, undiscovered asteroid to obtain a few handfuls of gravel for return to Earth.

These bite-size bits of ancient space rock from asteroid Bennu could hold result about the origin of life, not just on our planet but potentially elsewhere in the solar system. Thousands gathered to witness the evening launch of Osiris-Rex, a robotic hunter that looks something like a bird with its solar wings. The spacecraft took flight atop an Atlas V rocket.


EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS: Hundreds of people gathered to witness the launch of an Atlas V rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
  DISCOVERING A NEW HORIZONS: thousands of people came to witness the launch of an Atlas V rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
 
A successful victory was declared after the launch late on Thursday; launch controllers shook hands and embraced as the spacecraft shot out of Earth’s orbit, bound for Bennu.

“Tonight is a night for celebration. We are on our way to an asteroid,” said NASA’s chief scientist, Ellen Stofan. “We got everything just exactly perfect,” added Osiris-Rex chief scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. It will take two years for Osiris-Rex to reach Bennu, which is circling the sun in a slightly wider orbit than Earth’s. The boxy spacecraft will actually go into orbit around the asteroid, seeking out the best spot before going in for a quick bite.

Osiris-Rex will hover like a hummingbird over Bennu, according to Mr. Lauretta, as the spacecraft’s three-metre mechanical arm touches down on the surface for three to five seconds. Thrusters will burst out nitrogen gas to stir up the surface, and the loose particles will be sucked up into the device.

Round trip, the spacecraft will travel more than 6 billion kilometers by the mission’s end in 2023.

Keywords: NASA spaceship, undiscovered asteroid, solar, rocket,planet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ISRO ready for a critical crew rescuing test

The Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment which was test-flown by the ISRO two years ago.—PHOTO: THULASI KAKKAT It will test how fast and effectively the crew module of an intended space mission could punch out from a spacecraft The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up to conduct a critical ‘crew bailout test’ to see how fast and effectively the crew module of an intended space mission could punch out from the spacecraft safely in the event of an emergency. The test, known as Pad Abort, will be held at the launch pad of Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR) in a month or two, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) Director K. Sivan told The Hindu in an interaction on the sidelines of the ongoing expo in connection with the World Space Week celebrations at Ernakulathappan ground here. The test forms part of a gamut of critical technologies being developed by the space agency as it awaits the nod from the government for the ambitious ‘human in sp...

CHINWE(the life of a ghetto girl)Episode 1(18+)

A bucket was kicked violentlyaway from the line that hadbeen formed by the side of thewell. There was outrage.Voices were raised and a fewbodies were shoved in anger.This scenario played out almostevery morning and the residentsof inland street were used to the fracas. In the huge melee, Ironegot down to work briskly. Hedunked the small bucket used todraw water from the well andbegan to fill his many bucketsand basins, while Gbenga and Sesan tried to calm down thewarring parties. A few, veryobservant girls had keyed intoIrone’s train of thought anddeftly jumped the queue to getwater. One was those girls, was called Chinwe… Popularly knownas chi-chiChinwe was the hottest bitchon Koso street. Her beauty wasnot measured by her face,stature, brains, height, skin color or other such criteria.Chinwe's beauty was strictlymeasured by the activeness andactivity of her vagina.Her father had been stripped offhis manliness when he lost his job as a Hotel Manager in a No-Star, barely-above-a...

scientist targets Moving beyond the solar system to exoplanets

an artisitic view of the kepler space. Ever since the first exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) was discovered in 1995 by Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz, there has been renewed activity and interest in this field. The Kepler and K2 missions of NASA have identified thousands of planet candidates. Now there are nearly 5,000 planet candidates, and of these, some 3,397 have been confirmed as planets, according to the NASA exoplanet archive. The latest entry into the list of confirmed exoplanets is Kepler-56 d, which was added on 13 October. This planet has an orbital period of 1,002 days, accurate to five days, and a mass of nearly 5.61 times that of Jupiter. It is a massive planet that orbits its star Kepler-56 whose radius is about 4.23 times the sun’s radius and which is about 1.32 times as massive as the sun. This planet is only the third to be discovered orbiting its star Kepler-56. Being very massive, its presence was originally inferred by the periodic changes in Kepler-...