The Cosmic Gritter

at

Behold: asteroid Bennu. Nobody knows why this carbonaceous behemoth (which could impact the Earth sometime in the next 180 years) ejects gravel into space. But that’s what it does. To wit:

The discovery, occurring during several episodes by NASA‘s visiting OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, was unexpected. Leading ejection hypotheses include impacts by Sun-orbiting meteoroids, sudden thermal fractures of internal structures, and the sudden release of a water vapour jet. The featured two-image composite shows an ejection event that occurred in early 2019, with sun-reflecting ejecta seen on the right. Data and simulations show that large gravel typically falls right back to the rotating 500-metre asteroid, while smaller rocks skip around the surface, and the smallest rocks completely escape the low gravity of the Earth approaching, diamond-shaped asteroid. Jets and surface ejection events were thought to be predominantly the domain of comets, responsible for their tails, comas, and later meteor showers on Earth. Robotic OSIRIS-REx arrived at 101955 Bennu in late 2018, and is planned to touchdown to collect a surface sample in October 2020. If all goes well, this sample will then be returned to Earth for a detailed analysis during 2023. Bennu was chosen as the destination for OSIRIS-REx in part because its surface shows potential to reveal organic compounds from the early days of our Solar System, compounds that could have been the building blocks for life on Earth.

(Image: NASA‘s GSFC, U. Arizona, OSIRIS-REx Lockheed Martin)

apod

Sponsored Link

3 thoughts on “The Cosmic Gritter

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie