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Do you have some free time?
NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission Managers are looking for scientific citizens to help them count and characterize the rocks – many rocks – on the surface of the Bennu asteroid in order to facilitate the selection of a site sure for an attempt in July 2020 to collect samples for their return to Earth. .
"For the safety of the spacecraft, the mission team needs a complete catalog of all the rocks located near the potential sample collection sites," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx. "I invite members of the public to assist the OSIRIS-REx mission team in accomplishing this vital task."
NASA and CosmoQuest, a project run by the Planetary Science Institute, have put in place an interactive web interface that allows interested citizen scientists to map rocks, rocks and other interesting features. All that is required by the mapping application is a computer with a relatively large screen and a precision mouse or trackpad.
And the time. Full of time. This is because Bennu's crust seems to be made up of a blanket of rocks and rocks giving it the appearance of a pile of rubble.
"We are very pleased and excited to make the OSIRIS-REx images available for this important citizen science project," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Bennu surprised us with an abundance of rocks. We are asking the help of scientific citizens to assess this rough terrain in order to be able to keep our spacecraft safe during sampling operations. "
The OSIRIS-REx space probe is currently mapping Bennu's surface in detail. The mapping phase will continue until July 10, when mission planners will begin the process of selecting a site. Once the primary and secondary sites are selected, the probe will move to map the two areas at a resolution of less than one centimeter.
If all goes well, OSIRIS-REx will try to recover samples in July 2020 to return them on Earth in September 2023.
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