NASA needs your help to bring back an asteroid sample on Earth – BGR

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission has already accomplished a great deal since arriving in the space known as Bennu at the end of last year. The spacecraft successfully entered orbit the asteroid, scanned its surface with a laser and learned a lot about its surface. But its mission is far from over and, in the long run, the probe will have to make a daring maneuver to collect samples in order to restore the materials of the surface of the rock on Earth.

The mission team was surprised to see how Bennu's surface was rocky and the outer layer sown with debris would complicate the already complex task of collecting samples. Now, NASA is asking for our help to decide where it should land.

One of the biggest challenges of the OSIRIS-REx team is to find areas of the asteroid that are not covered with huge rocks or craters. Ideally, the spacecraft will retrieve a surface sample in an area with the fewest potentially hazardous features possible. To this end, NASA has developed a practical tool for analyzing the surface of the asteroid and helping the OSIRIS-REx team by marking objects such as craters, rocks and smaller rocks.

Image Source: Mike Wehner

"For the safety of the spacecraft, the mission team needs a complete catalog of all the rocks located near the potential sample collection sites, and I will 39, invites the public to help the OSIRIS-REx mission team to accomplish this vital task, "said Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx chief investigator, said in a statement.

The tool, which you can access via the Bennu website, provides a brief tutorial on how to tag each image before letting you lose random images of the surface of the asteroid that need to be marked. You will need to label the features of the surface, such as rocks and craters, and then move on to the next image.

By comparing your benchmarks with those of other people who have analyzed the same images, scientists will be able to create an accurate map of the safest and most dangerous surface areas. It's a nifty way to involve science fans in a very important mission, and you should really take it for a ride.

Source of Image: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona / Lockheed Martin