【】
A spacecraft on a mission to bite off a piece of an asteroid just flew past Earth, snapping a photo of our home planet along the way.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is expected to get to the asteroid Bennu next year, but on Friday, about one year after its launch, the spacecraft slingshotted around Earth to get it speeding in the right direction for its meetup with the space rock, which is taller than the Empire State Building.
SEE ALSO:NASA just launched a spacecraft to help us find the origins of life on EarthScientists took the opportunity to snap photos of Earth for a composite image showing our entire planet.
"Visible in this image are the Pacific Ocean and several familiar landmasses, including Australia in the lower left, and Baja California and the southwestern United States in the upper right," NASA said in a statement.
"The dark vertical streaks at the top of the image are caused by short exposure times (less than three milliseconds)."
The OSIRIS-REx photo is part of the mission managers' plan to calibrate the spacecraft's instruments in anticipation of its arrival at the asteroid in late 2018.
Once at Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will study the space rock from close range and even sample the asteroid, collecting a piece of it to send it back to Earth for scientists to study in detail. Ideally, the sample should make it back to our planet by 2023.
Researchers are particularly interested in learning more about Bennu because it's a remnant from the early days of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.
By studying the asteroid up close, scientists should get a better sense of how planets and other objects in the solar system formed.
Tweet may have been deleted
It's even possible that data from Bennu could help explain how life came to be on Earth. Early asteroids might have slammed into Earth, delivering some of the ingredients for life as we understand it to form.
"The formation of the solar system was a violent but dimly recorded time," Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist, said during a news conference ahead of the mission's launch in 2016.
"Although most of the record of the ancient Earth is lost to the dynamic geology that shaped our planet, there are lines of evidence that indicate that heavy bombardment by debris from the formation of the solar system around the same time helped form the oceans, and around a few million years later, life."
Featured Video For You
NASA just launched a spacecraft to help us find the origins of life on Earth
相关文章
Old lady swatting at a cat ends up in Photoshop battle
We all have that relative who gets annoyed with the cat.。This timeless photo of an old woman shooing2024-11-10Tropicana toothpaste review: Finally, you can drink orange juice after brushing your teeth
Few things taste worse than a mouthful of orange juice right after brushing your teeth. That tangy v2024-11-10'Resident Evil 4' for Oculus is a thrill, but it feels like less of a classic in VR
Capcom is going to keep re-releasing Resident Evil 4until long after I'm gone, and I've grown to acc2024-11-10Adam McKay's 'Don't Look Up' is a fatalistic bummer: Netflix Review
If an extinction-level comet ever does threaten Earth, then I imagine Don't Look Up might be somethi2024-11-10This chart shows just how high Simone Biles can jump
American gymnast Simone Biles has dominated the Rio Olympics with five medals (four of them gold) bu2024-11-10Xiaomi reveals launch date for series 12 flagship phone
Xiaomi's next flagship smartphones, the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro, will be revealed in China on December2024-11-10
最新评论