OSIRIS-REx Arrives at Bennu
<p>After traveling through space for more than two years and over two billion miles, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrived at its destination, asteroid Bennu, on Monday, Dec. 3, 2018. The spacecraft will spend almost a year surveying the asteroid with five scientific instruments with the goal of selecting a location that is safe and scientifically interesting to collect the sample. OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023.
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This series of images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows Bennu in one full rotation from a distance of around 50 miles (80 km). The spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the thirty-six 2.2-millisecond frames over a period of four hours and 18 minutes.
NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
Taken on 25 November 2018
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://www.asteroidmission.org/?attachment_id=12182">https://www.asteroidmission.org/?attachment_id=12182</a> (<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.asteroidmission.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Bennu_Full_Rotation50Miles.gif">image link</a>); see also <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/osiris-rex-approach">https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/osiris-rex-approach</a>