Today’s NASA picture is a little bit more ominous than our usual fare but the asteroid Bennu can’t help that the marketing team behind its debut decided on the nickname “apocalypse asteroid.”
As you might imagine, it gets that name because it is actually quite large: Big enough to destroy an entire city on Earth’s surface, to be exact.
And now we’re getting some upclose shots of what this metro ender looks like and they are spectacular.
Taken from less than half a mile above the surface of the asteroid, these pics captured by the OSIRIS-Rex probe show a rocky terrain surrounded by utter darkness. Measuring some 500 meters wide, Bennu also gets is “apocalypse” nickname because there is the smallest chance that it could hit the Earth at some point according to NASA.
The possibility is remote, but remote enough to be notable. But don’t worry – most of us won’t be here. It has a 1 in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199 according to Metro UK. If it did hit, it would unleash more energy than all of the nuclear weapons detonated and tested throughout human history.
NASA said of the picture, “This is the view from the closest orbit a spacecraft has ever made around a planetary body…From the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit, half of Bennu is sunlit and half is in shadow. Bennu’s largest boulder can also be seen protruding from the southern hemisphere.”
NASA’s plan is to land the probe on Bennu in 2020 and then recover samples from its surface. These will then be returned to the Earth in what can only be called one of the most impressive feats of coordination ever.
Have some thoughts about Bennu? Leave them in the comments below.
[Metro]
5 Comments
What NASA should be doing is not getting a cup of dirt/dust from this asteroid but place an object on the surface to slightly push the asteroid on a trajectory that will aend it off into deep space or prevent it from ecer getting close enough to hit the earth.
Lol I really hope nobody believes a word of this. I mean NASA is going to land a probe on a moving asteroid but can’t even get to the moon all of a sudden with all of our “technology” we have now but didn’t have in the 60’s LOL please stop and think for just a minute people oh and 1 more thing those pics are completely cgi so bs your investors NASA lol
People take note. Shane is a prime example of why we need more science and a focus on scientific method, logical process analysis, and other strong stem topics to NOT bring down society to the ineptitude and stupidity of Shane’s level. We can not let anti-intellectualism and conspiracy theory nonsense decimate our society’s chance at intellectual advancement. Fact-based skepticism is good for healthy debate or to challenge us but not baseless and flat-out ignorant ramblings from uneducated nitwits like Shane. They don’t deserve our effort or time.
Yep. As long as we live in a country that believes increased spending for education is unnecessary or that “more money for education won’t help,” we can expect Shane to be a common result.
That is precisely what will happen when the surface sampler leaves the surface of the asteroid.