Osiris-REX Arrives at Asteroid Bennu NASA’s ambitious Osiris-REX mission will now survey 101955 Bennu and attempt to return a sample to Earth. Read more… |
We’ve started getting good imagery of Bennu from the OCAMS camera suite aboard Osiris-REX over the past month, as the tiny world swells into view. Looking like a 10-sided die straight out of Dungeons and Dragons, Bennu actually shares an uncanny resemblance with asteroid 162173 Ryugu, where the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa-2 is currently carrying out a similar sample return mission. Bennu rotates once every 4.3 hours, and seems to have at several large boulders clustered in one hemisphere.
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, December 7 – 15 Check out our observing picks for this week! Read more… |
SpaceX Launches Orbiting “Sculpture in the Sky” / Comet Update A satellite sculpture achieves orbit, 46P/Wirtanen becomes a naked-eye comet, and Comet C/2018 V1 makes one last good pass. Read more… |