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NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission has been progressing steadily since the spacecraft arrived at the diamond-shaped space rock known as Bennu a few months ago, but not everything worked out as planned.
The rock ended up being much dirtier than NASA originally planned. Bennu's surface is absolutely full of debris, which poses a challenge to the NASA team who still have to decide where to place the probe on the asteroid to collect samples. Now, with the help of a laser instrument built into OSIRIS-REx, NASA is examining in detail how dangerous the surface is.
In a new blog post, NASA explains how it used a tool called OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter (OLA) to analyze much of Bennu's surface. The instrument paints in 3D the hard surfaces on which the laser bounces, offering NASA researchers a detailed overview of the rock surface of the asteroid.
Choosing a location where the probe should land could ultimately determine whether the most dangerous maneuver of the mission – a brief touchdown and sample collection – succeeds or fails. Landing in an area with too much debris could be catastrophic for the probe, damaging the spacecraft itself and potentially compromising one of its major objectives.
The three-dimensional laser model of the asteroid provides NASA teams with a little more information about the parts of the asteroid that seem safer than others. Avoiding big boulders is obviously the answer, but with so few seemingly "clean" spaces on Bennu, it will always be difficult to decide the best place to take a sample.
NASA still has plenty of time to make this decision, however, with the probe scheduled to remain in orbit around Bennu for the duration of 2019 before attempting its most risky move. In the meantime, we will learn more and more about the strange-shaped asteroid while OSIRIS-REx continues to relay data to Earth.
Source of Image: NASA / University of Arizona / CSA / York / MDA
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