Surface of asteroid Bennu soft like plastic ball pit, OSIRIS-REx spacecraft finds

An amazing surprise greeted NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it touched down on the asteroid Bennu in 2020 -- The asteroid was not what it seemed -- according to research published Thursday in the journals Science and Science Advances.

After it analyzed data from the spacecraft, NASA said it would have sunk into the asteroid if it hadn't fired thrusters to lift off as soon as it collected the dust and rock samples because of its makeup.

That's because the surface of Bennu consists of loosely packed particles so lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step onto the asteroid surface it would feel like a pit of plastic balls similar to those found in children's play areas.

"If Bennu was completely packed, that would imply nearly solid rock, but we found a lot of void space in the surface," said Kevin Walsh, a member of the OSIRIS-REx science team from San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute.

According to Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx, "Our expectations about the asteroid's surface were completely wrong."

The scientists were astonished by dramatic close-up images of the asteroid after the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on Bennu and picked up a sample from the surface. According to Lauretta, they saw a large debris wall radiating out from the sample site.

According to Ron Ballouz, an OSIRIS-REx scientist based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory in Maryland, by the time the spacecraft's thrusters were fired to lift off it was still plunging into the asteroid.

Information gathered from the Bennu mission will help scientists better interpret remote observations of other asteroids and for developing methods to protect Earth from asteroid collisions, according to NASA.

Related Links
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Asteroid Bennu Reveals its Surface is Like a Plastic Ball Pit
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jul 11, 2022
After analyzing data gathered when NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020, scientists have learned something astonishing: The spacecraft would have sunk into Bennu had it not fired its thrusters to back away immediately after it grabbed dust and rock from the asteroid's surface. It turns out that the particles making up Bennu's exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step onto Bennu they would feel very li ... read more