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Kinder Surprise
After years in orbit and eventually landing to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has made another startling discovery.
Bennu, a rapidly rotating space rock orbiting near Earth, appears to be hollow, according to a press release. Not only that, but scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who analyzed the new data from the lander, found that Bennu was spinning so fast that he also seemed to slowly tear apart, gradually throwing rocks and rock. dust in space.
Soft landing
When NASA landed, scientists were surprised both by the amount of Bennu that collapsed under OSIRIS-REx and by the amount of rock that was washed away by the nitrogen puff it fired for. release samples. But after running some data, it makes more sense: Bennu’s gravitational pull is surprisingly weak for an object his size, leading researchers to conclude that it looks more like an egg with a shell than it does. to a solid piece of rock.
“It’s like there’s a void in the center where you could put some football fields,” Daniel Scheeres, University of Colorado aerospace engineer and senior researcher, said in the statement.
Sandstorm
When Bennu spins, he sometimes throws rocks outward. Some of them fall back but others get lost in space, which has led the researchers to say that the rock will gradually turn towards death.
“You can imagine maybe in a million years or less, the whole thing shattered,” Scheeres said in the statement.
READ MORE: Scientists peek inside an asteroid [University of Colorado Boulder]
Learn more about Bennu: NASA spaceship grabbed too many asteroid pieces and now they’re drifting through space
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