Vietnam.vn - Nền tảng quảng bá Việt Nam

Revealing the alien world 'kidnapping' NASA ship

VTC NewsVTC News19/09/2023


A group of NASA scientists has just revealed the thrilling days of the OSIRIS-REx mission, the spacecraft scheduled to drop a "treasure" to Earth on September 23.

OSIRIS-REx is a spacecraft tasked with sampling the ancient asteroid Bennu, a "fossil" from the dawn of the solar system.

NASA spacecraft must face a world completely different from imagination. (Photo: NASA)

NASA spacecraft must face a world completely different from imagination. (Photo: NASA)

The specimen was about to parachute down in Utah before OSIRIS-REx left for a new mission. But it was a near-miss. NASA almost lost the $800 million spacecraft.

Before OSIRIS-REx, another famous spacecraft, Japan’s Hayabusa, successfully sampled the asteroid Itokawa. NASA used that event as a guide for designing OSIRIS-REx, because Itokawa and Bennu look so similar.

However, Dr. Kevin Walsh of the Southwest Research Institute (USA), a member of the NASA/OSIRIS-REx mission, said that when they got closer, they discovered that Bennu had more ponds containing fine particles than Itokawa. Not to mention, the asteroid's terrain is extremely complex. Although the thermal properties shown through remote observations showed that Bennu was very smooth, when approaching NASA immediately realized that they had to face a dangerous "rock formation".

If it lands as planned, OSIRIS-REx risks being "abducted" by Bennu forever because it cannot take off again or even break up when it hits rocks.

OSIRIS-REx was unexpectedly saved by... legendary guitarist Sir Brian May of the band Queen, who is also an astronomy enthusiast and has a PhD in astronomy 30 years ago - when he was not yet famous in the art field.

Dr. May contacted the OSIRIS-REx team and assisted NASA in reconstructing detailed stereoscopic images of Bennu's surface, thereby identifying an area flat enough for OSIRIS-REx to land safely.

With the help of the music legend, the team found a large, unobstructed impact crater. It was still a challenge, as instead of the planned 50m wide landing strip, it had to squeeze into Nightingale Crater, which was only 10m in diameter.

Still, NASA's spacecraft got lucky, and the sample it's about to bring back promises to help humanity find clues about the origin of everything in the solar system, including life on Earth.

(Source: Lao Dong Newspaper)



Source

Comment (0)

No data
No data

Same tag

Same category

'Rich' flowers costing 1 million VND each are still popular on October 20th
Vietnamese Films and the Journey to the Oscars
Young people go to the Northwest to check in during the most beautiful rice season of the year
In the season of 'hunting' for reed grass in Binh Lieu

Same author

Heritage

Figure

Enterprise

Quang Ngai fishermen pocket millions of dong every day after hitting the jackpot with shrimp

News

Political System

Destination

Product