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If you need to be transported to small world far, far away, then my oh my you MUST watch these videos of a spaceship hoovering up pieces of an asteroid and chomping down on them. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/update-incredible-footage-of-osiris-rex-tagging-an-asteroid
2/ Although I guess it's antihoovering, since it used tanks of nitrogen gas to blast the rocks off the surface. The video takes places over 3 hours of real time and shows the approach, adjustments, touchdown, blast, and collection of rocks. And those last few seconds... wow.
3/ More videos show the collector box being secured to the spacecraft Sample Return Capsule (which will send the rocks to Earth), and the lid closing down.
Note: This all happened 330 million kilometers away. Twice the distance of the Earth from the Sun. https://twitter.com/i/status/1321917951226925056
Note: This all happened 330 million kilometers away. Twice the distance of the Earth from the Sun. https://twitter.com/i/status/1321917951226925056
4/ Apropos of, well, everything, I sometimes need to pull my head out of the endless news screaming/doomscrolling and remember that we are capable of great things, truly wondrous things, when we are curious and act on our greater desire for knowledge and exploration.
5/ At the same time as these videos were shot by @OSIRISREx, scientists published results from its observations indicating that the small asteroid Bennu has only been on a near-Earth orbit for <2 million years! It's 100+ million years old, so this is a new act for it.
6/ It used to stay out past Mars, but now it swings so close to Earth it could hit us in the future. By going to this asteroid and studying it up close we're learning about its past and its possible (but hopefully not) future.
7/ And from there we may learn how to prevent such calamaties. Bennu is 500 meters across, ~20,000 times the volume of the asteroid that burned up over Cheklyabinsk in 2013. Learning how to stop that? Yeah, I'm for that. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/one-year-after-russias-sky-exploded
8/8 So not only are we doing cool science, we're also learning how to save humanity… and we're getting amazing images and videos on top of it all.
It also shows that humans can do good together. We really can.
Remember that. It's important. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/update-incredible-footage-of-osiris-rex-tagging-an-asteroid
It also shows that humans can do good together. We really can.
Remember that. It's important. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/update-incredible-footage-of-osiris-rex-tagging-an-asteroid
