Asteroid Bennu: New Nasa photos from space show unexpected discoveries
- Published
A Nasa spacecraft has discovered an asteroid called Bennu. This view shows the asteroid ejecting particles from its surface on 19 January and was created by combining two images taken by the NavCam 1 imager onboard Nasa’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft. Phew, what a mouthful! You can call it OSIRIS-REx for short. Two cameras work together to show both the asteroid and particles clearly. Pretty clever! Other image processing techniques were also applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each layer.
Wow, that's a LOT of rock! This image shows a view across asteroid Bennu’s southern hemisphere and into space. It demonstrates the number and distribution of boulders across Bennu’s surface. The image was taken on 7 Mar by the PolyCam camera on Nasa’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a distance of about 3 miles. The large, light-coloured boulder just below the centre of the image is about 24 feet (7.4 meters) wide, which is roughly half the width of a basketball court.