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This is a first in the spatial history of Senegal. NASA travels to Senegal for an observation of an asteroid occultation. The information is provided by Marame Kairé, guest of Rfm morning, this Thursday.
Senegal is in the spotlight this year. NASA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be in Senegal from July 29 to August 5, 2018. The traveling team, made up of 45 international researchers, astronomers and astrophysicists, will be assisted by some 20 Senegalese scientists. This mission aims to observe and collect data on an object called 2014MU69, an asteroid of the Kuiper Belt (an area of our solar system located beyond the Planet Pluto) and discovered in 2014 by the space telescope HUBBLE.
After successfully launching the New Horizons space probe in 2006, which visited Pluto in 2015, NASA decided to continue the mission beyond its orbit and it is expected that the spacecraft will encounter , January 1, 2019, the asteroid MU69, 6 billion kilometers from the Earth.
During the summer of 2017, several telescopes in the world have benefited from the passage of the asteroid in front of a star (occultation) to learn a little more about it. The observations suggest that the celestial body has a bilobed shape and could even have a moon.
According to the astronomer Marame Kairé, on the waves of the Rfm, "Senegal is chosen with Colombia by NASA, by their favorable and strategic geographical positions to be able to momentarily record images at the passage of the probe in front of the Sun " he explained, this Thursday morning.
And M. Kairé adds that: "NASA's observer teams will work in close collaboration with Senegalese scientists from Senegalese universities, the Senegalese Association for the Promotion of Astronomy and some research organizations such as ISRA, CSE, ANACIM, ANAT, etc. "
Moreover, according to him," the NASA team will be divided into 21 groups. And that in each group, a Senegalese scientist will appear. "
The observation of the occultation, passage of the asteroid in front of a star, will take place in the night of August 3 to 4, 2018. It will be a a major moment for exchanges on astronomy research between Senegalese scientists and international experts mobilized as part of the mission. It will also be a rare moment of popularization of science, especially astronomy for the general public.
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