The delivery will give scientists a rare opportunity to study asteroid material using all the advanced equipment ground-based laboratories must offer.īut scientists don’t need to get their hands on that sample to dig into spacecraft observations for two and a half years. In May, the spacecraft and its precious payload said goodbye to the asteroid and returned to Earth, where OSIRIS-REx will deposit the capsule sample in September 2023. The spacecraft’s visit to the asteroid reached its climax in October 2020, when OSIRIS-REx snatched a sample of Bennu to stash away. Using this data, the team behind the new research was able to improve their understanding of the location and movement of space rocks for about two and a half years. Throughout that time, the spacecraft has been constantly recording its position in relation to Earth and the asteroid. “We’ve been able to go into orbit, we’ve been able to leave orbit, and we’ve been able to get into a variety of shooting angles.” “The spacecraft’s trajectory was really amazing - I compared it to a hummingbird,” said Dante Loretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and author of the new research, during the press conference. OSIRIS-REx (formally known as Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) was launched in September 2016 and slipped into orbit around the asteroid Bennu in December 2018.Īfter arriving, the spacecraft spent nearly two and a half years studying space rocks from orbit, swooping over them, flying over them and inspecting the rock in every possible way. I think the situation has generally improved.
(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
RELATED: NASA Spacecraft Leaves Asteroid Bennu to Bring Pieces to Earth READ MORE: How OSIRIS-REx Makes Those Asteroid Bennu PhotosĪn image of the asteroid Bennu produced by the OSIRIS-REx mission.
NASA said that while it represents a slightly higher risk than previous estimates, it represents a small change in an already low risk. Estimates produced before OSIRIS-REx reached the space rock calculated the cumulative probability of a Bennu impact between 21 at 1 in 2,700, according to NASA. And with this incredibly detailed view of the asteroid, experts studying potential space rock impacts on Earth have been able to fine-tune their current models of Bennu’s future.Īs a result, the scientists behind the new research now say they are confident that the total probability of an asteroid impact across 2300 is just 1 in 1750. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has spent more than two years orbiting closely around the space rock. The performance of the algorithm, its sensitivity to model parameters and its robustness to illumination and shadowing conditions, are analysed via numerical simulation.If the prospect of an asteroid called Bennu hitting Earth for a lifetime from now keeps you up at night, NASA scientists think you can rest a bit.
The method is capable of real-time performance while improving upon conventional computer vision-based approaches, and generalises well to previously unseen object geometries, enabling this approach to be a feasible solution for safely performing guidance and navigation in active debris removal, satellite servicing and other close proximity operations. A siamese convolutional neural network is developed, which detects and tracks inherently useful landmarks from sensor data, after training upon synthetic datasets of visual, LiDAR or RGB-D data. We present a novel approach which adopts deep learning technologies to the problem of attitude determination of an uncooperative debris satellite of an a-priori unknown geometry. Active debris removal missions pose demanding guidance, navigation and control requirements.
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