A video tour of the Bennu asteroid
From NASA Goddard:
When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a spinning top. This major validation, however, was accompanied by a major surprise. Scientists had expected Bennu's surface to consist of fine-grained material like a sandy beach, but were instead greeted by a rugged world littered with boulders – the size of cars, the size of houses, the size of football fields. Now, thanks to laser altimetry data and high-resolution imagery from OSIRIS-REx, we can take a tour of Bennu's remarkable terrain.
This impressive video tour of the asteroid Bennu has gotten lots of criticism on YouTube for being more about the mythological origins of the names used for its geologic formations than the science behind the features themselves. One's mileage will always vary. I loved hearing about the myths behind the names and it reminded me of the fact that even in the precise and rigorous realms of science, a lot of thought, imagination, and humor go into the naming of things.
DMT.NEWS
via https://www.DMT.NEWS
Gareth Branwyn, Khareem Sudlow
