An ‘Armageddon’ style mission to collect samples.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: NASA is planning for an ‘Armageddon’ style mission in 2016 to the asteroid Bennu – not to destroy it like depicted in the film, but to collect samples from it. Bennu is expected to collide with earth sometime later this century.
According to Scientific American, the camera system for the asteroid bound mission is being developed at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The mission named OSIRIS REx will touch down on the asteroid Bennu in 2019 and collect samples of rocks and gas, later to return to the earth by 2023.
OSIRIS Rex stands for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security Regolith Explorer.
The approval for the NASA voyage took so long that the man behind the mission plan, Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson, died, before he could see it realized.
Bennu, codenamed 1999 RQ36, is one among the known 500,000 asteroids in the solar system.
According to Peter Smith of Arizona University, “Bennu is only one of five asteroids that met all the criteria for a return sample. It is more than 200 metres across, carbonaceous and in an orbit that is both optimal for sample return and approaching ours to within one third the average Earth-Sun distance.”
Smith along with some of his colleagues is currently engrossed in building the camera for the mission to Bennu. In addition to this, the university is also making LiDAR, infrared spectrometers and other devices to help scientists determine the chemistry and orbit of asteroid Bennu.
Meanwhile, another small body landing attempt will be done by the European Space Agency on November 3, this time on a comet named Churyumov–Gerasimenko.