Given these parameters, astronomers can predict the next four exact dates (in September of 2054, 2060, 20) that Bennu will come within 7.5 million kilometers (5 million miles or. Their predictions are informed by ground observations and mathematical calculations that account for the gravitational nudging of Bennu by the Sun, the Moon, planets and other asteroids, plus non-gravitational factors. Scientists have estimated Bennu’s trajectory around the Sun far into the future. Why Bennu’s future trajectory predictions get fuzzy “We know within a few kilometers where Bennu is right now,” said Steven Chesley, senior research scientist at CNEOSand an OSIRIS-REx team member whose job it is to predict Bennu’s future trajectory. They’ve turned their optical, infrared and radio telescopes toward the asteroid every time it came close enough to Earth, about every six years, to deduce features such as its shape, rotation rate and trajectory. Even so, astronomers want to know exactly where Bennu is located at all times.Īstronomers have estimated Bennu’s future trajectory after observing it several times since it was discovered in 1999. Put another way, those odds mean there is a 99.963 percent chance the asteroid will miss the Earth. Asteroid experts at the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, project that Bennu will come close enough to Earth over the next century to pose a 1 in 2,700 chance of impacting it between 21. If it impacted Earth, Bennu would cause widespread damage. How scientists predict Bennu’s whereaboutsĪbout a third of a mile, or half a kilometer, wide, Bennu is large enough to reach Earth’s surface many smaller space objects, in contrast, burn up in our atmosphere. Here is how the OSIRIS-REx mission will support this work: As they collect the most detailed information yet about the forces that move asteroids, experts from NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, who are responsible for detecting potentially hazardous asteroids, will improve their predictions of which ones could be on a crash-course with our planet. Scientists studying the rock through OSIRIS-REx’s instruments in space will also shape our future. Generations of planetary scientists will get to study pieces of the primitive materials that formed our cosmic neighborhood and to better understand the role asteroids may have played in delivering life-forming compounds to planets and moons.īut it’s not just history that the mission to Bennu will help uncover.
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