Asteroid Autumn

 

NASA has named the next season in 2023 “Asteroid Autumn”. Here’s why.

• On September 26, we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the DART impact of the 160-meter asteroid, Dimorphos, that orbits the larger 780-meter asteroid Didymos, changing its orbital period and proving that direct impact could be a means to avoid future Earth impacts from asteroids.
• On October 5. NASA plans to launch a probe to explore the metallic 253 km asteroid, Psyche. The asteroid is primarily iron and nickel but contains many other precious metals and would have a value on earth of $10 quintillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000).
• On November 1, the Lucy spacecraft will fly-by the 700-meter main-belt asteroid, Dinkinesh, on its way to exploring 6 Trojan asteroids that are ahead and behind the planet Jupiter in its orbit and one more main-belt asteroid for a total of 8 asteroids.

You have to admit, NASA has a lot of asteroid missions on its plate.

 It has been a while since I posted and Keith is experimenting with some Tik Toc videos, so I wrote a couple of short blurbs and thought they would also make good posts. Here is the first.

It was an exciting Sunday morning, September 24, 2023 with the landing of the sample return from the asteroid, Bennu, on the Osiris-Rex capsule. The probe was launched in 2016 and took a 2-year journey to the 500 meter or 1/3 mile wide asteroid. It orbited the asteroid for about 2 years setting the record for the smallest body ever orbited and then performed a touch-a-go sampling with the robotic arm penetrating over a foot into the asteroid’s surface, surprising scientists with fragility of its composition.

The probe then took 2 years to return to Earth, dropping off the sample capsule so it could scream into the atmosphere at 27,650 mph and decelerate at a maximum of 32 G’s and finally parachute down to the Utah desert at a sedate 11 mph.

Scientists hope that the capsule contains as much as 250 grams, a sample about one and a half times the size of a baseball, of pristine 4.5-billion-year-old rocks from the original formation of the Solar System.

The rest of the Osiris-Rex probe after dropping off the sample return capsule, fired its thrusters to avoid collision with Earth and will go on to orbit the 340-meter asteroid, Apophis, which will make an uncomfortably close fly-by of the Earth in 2029.