/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cIt is so much more than we were expecting. There are all sorts of surprises from a very complex topography to the composition of the surface./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2013 Humberto Campins, UCF professor/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cIt is so much more than we were expecting,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d he says from his campus office in Orlando. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cWe/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019ve been reviewing images and other data for months and many things we expected, including the overall shape, were right on. But there are all sorts of surprises from a very complex topography to the composition of the surface. We are refining our encounter plans because this asteroid is so interesting./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
The team, led by 海角直播 of Arizona Professor Dante Lauretta, shared some of the mission/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s findings today at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. The team, which includes dozens of scientists from across the nation and the world, also reported some of its preliminary findings in Nature and Nature Astronomy, which published several articles today. Lauretta had another surprise for those attending the conference: He announced that Bennu is ejecting particles into space./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/nThat discovery was made shortly after the spacecraft established orbit around Bennu. A navigation camera on the spacecraft captured an image that showed particles off the surface of the asteroid. The team readjusted the array of science and navigation instruments onboard to get a better look, Campins says./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cIt means this is an active asteroid instead of an inert body,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d Campins says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cWe do not know yet how the particles are being released from the surface, but they pose a whole new set of questions. This is what science is about /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2013 inquiry and discovery. It is the most exciting time of my career./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/nPhysics Professor Humberto Campins/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/nThe team determined the stream of particles did not pose a hazard to the spacecraft. But between the mysterious particles and the unexpected terrain on the surface of Bennu, plans for retrieving the sample are being adapted./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cOn the basis of our pre-encounter knowledge, we developed a sampling strategy to target 50-metre-diameter patches of loose regolith with grain sizes smaller than two centimetres,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d the team wrote in one of the Nature papers published today. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cWe observe only a small number of apparently hazard-free regions, of the order of 5 to 20 metres in extent, the sampling of which poses a substantial challenge./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/nBut the instruments aboard the spacecraft are sophisticated and the assembled team has expertise. They expect to fulfill the mission, but they say it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s just going to be a little more complicated./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
For Campins, the unexpected is a particularly good opportunity. He has been researching /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cactive asteroids/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d for years and is eager to see what the close-up studies of Bennu will reveal./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
The Japanese space agency launched its own mission, Hayabusa2, to retrieve a sample from another asteroid, Ryugu. Their spacecraft collected a sample Feb. 22 and released video of the maneuver. The Hayabusa2 mission is scheduled to return to Earth in 2020. The findings of the operation have been of interest to the OSIRIS-REx team and vice versa. There is considerable cooperation between these two missions, Campins says./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
The OSIRIS-REx team is working diligently to select a suitable site on Bennu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s surface for sampling. The retrieval of the sample is expected to be executed during a touch-and-go maneuver in 2020./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
The OSIRIS-REx mission seeks to answer fundamental and practical questions. Bennu was selected because data from Earth, including some collected by the NSF-funded and UCF-managed Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. These data indicated Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid that may contain material from the earliest history of our solar system. The asteroid is expected to contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s oceans. It is also an asteroid that could potentially impact Earth sometime next century. Learning about its composition would be critical in developing any plan to prevent an impact, according to the mission website./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cIt/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s exhilarating. I can/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019t wait to see what else we will discover as we make more detailed maps and begin piecing together what it all means,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d says Campins, who is an international expert on asteroids. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201cThis is what research is about./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UCF physics Professor Humberto Campins is part of the team studying Bennu, which may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s oceans./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":95525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,23,24],"tags":[982,1775,2229,14916,4361],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-95466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-research","category-science-technology","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-florida-space-instit","tag-humberto-campins","tag-research","tag-space"],"yoast_head":"/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n
Asteroid Bennu Gives NASA/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/u2019s OSIRIS-REx Mission Team Lots of Surprises/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/95466/n