![]() While Bennu won’t come close enough to pose a threat to Earth then, knowing its exact trajectory can help scientists better understand how the gravity of our planet will change the asteroid’s future orbit around the sun. The asteroid will make its next closest approach to Earth in 2135. The OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an extraordinary opportunity to refine and test these models, helping us better predict where Bennu will be when it makes its close approach to Earth more than a century from now.” “We carry out this endeavor through continuing astronomical surveys that collect data to discover previously unknown objects and refine our orbital models for them. “NASA’s Planetary Defense mission is to find and monitor asteroids and comets that can come near Earth and may pose a hazard to our planet,” said Kelly Fast, program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA headquarters in Washington, in a statement. ![]() If Bennu does impact Earth, it would create a crater between 10 to 20 times its size and cause an area of devastation that could reach 100 times the size of the crater, said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer.Ī study based on the findings published Wednesday in the journal Icarus. I think overall the situation has improved and I’m not any more concerned about than I was before.” “We actually now have a much better knowledge of the Bennu trajectory and we can better constrain what the possible pathways to impact are. “It’s not a significant change and the impact probability is pretty much the same,” said lead study author Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. Prior to OSIRIS-REx visiting and studying Bennu, researchers thought the overall probability of Bennu impacting Earth through 2200 was 1 in 2,700.Įven though this means the odds are greater of Bennu hitting Earth in the future, the researchers don’t believe the change is great enough to worry about. ![]() This is what an asteroid looks like after playing tag with a spacecraft Images were taken April 7 as part of a final campaign to document the state of the surface post- TAG. If you could live forever, would you? Review: Edward, the … Next Post If Roaches Formed a Miniature Civilization… Sci-fi Saturday “Rocket Roaches” (2019) at DUST by Mick Mahler (August 13, 2021, 9:44 min) When the diligent cockroaches build a rocket to fly to the moon, they accidentally wake up one of the last humans from his virtual dreams.This is a view of the Nightingale sample site on asteroid Bennu after the collection event. Previous Post Android Asks, Is Immortality Truly a Benefit? - Sci-fi Saturday “Extent” (2018) at DUST by Paul Michael Draper (August 9, 2021, 12:43 min) Time stands still as two old friends attempt to grapple with a question that defines their very existence. Mind Matters News Breaking and noteworthy news from the exciting world of natural and artificial intelligence at MindMatters.ai. You may also wish to read: Could huge chunks of asteroid gold wreck our economy? 16 Psyche’s gold illustrates how AI affects jobs. Meanwhile, there is this one:Īn asteroid lingers near Earth and devours time (13:23 min) Or, at any rate, it devours our perception of time, as one man discovers in “Flyby.” As the asteroid Chrono-7 hazes Earth, a man wakes up in the morning to find that he is living in his future, one he had never imagined. Maybe the possibility of an asteroid hit will generate more post-asteroid apocalypse sci-fi. An asteroid hit is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and many other types of life forms 66 million years ago. NASA has catalogued 26,000 near-Earth asteroids so far. ![]() Meghan Bartels, “ Scientists fine-tune odds of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth through 2300 with NASA probe’s help” at (August 11, 2021)Ī paper discussing the Osiris Rex’s findings is open access. How precisely that dance plays out will shape Bennu’s trajectory over the next decades and centuries. In September of that year, Bennu will swing past Earth - not close enough that there’s any risk of an impact, but certainly close enough that Earth’s gravity could nudge the asteroid a bit on its path. However, despite the scientists’ best efforts, predicting Bennu’s course after 2135 is still tricky. That uncertainty remains even in the new and improved models of Bennu’s future path, but with the OSIRIS-REx observations, scientists were able to dramatically reduce their uncertainty about Bennu’s fate… Scientists’ models of asteroid trajectories always include some degree of uncertainty, since a multitude of forces tug at a space rock as it rattles around the inner solar system.
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