Asteroid Bennu, We Are Going To Explore – Strange Journeys into Space Exploration – Video

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Asteroid Bennu, We Are Going To Explore - Strange Journeys into Space Exploration
(101955) 1999 RQ36 - "We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution," said Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona, Deputy Principal...

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Asteroid Bennu, We Are Going To Explore - Strange Journeys into Space Exploration - Video

Galaxy Smash-Up ‘Ejects’ Supermassive Black Hole | Animation – Video

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Galaxy Smash-Up #39;Ejects #39; Supermassive Black Hole | Animation
Full Story: http://goo.gl/A0cQxZ 90 million light-years away, the Markarian 177 dwarf galaxy shows signs of having kicked its supermassive black hole out into a wide orbit, after encountering...

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Galaxy Smash-Up 'Ejects' Supermassive Black Hole | Animation - Video

New Animation Follows Long, Strange Trip Of Bennu

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Provided by Bill Steigerwald, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Born from the rubble of a violent collision, hurled through space for millions of years and dismembered by the gravity of planets, asteroid Bennu had a tough life in a rough neighborhood: the early solar system. Bennus Journey, a new animation created at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, shows whats known and what remains mysterious about the life of Bennu and the origin of the solar system.

[ Watch the Video: Asteroid Bennus Journey ]

We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution, said Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona, Deputy Principal Investigator for NASAs asteroid-sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security Regolith Explorer). The mission will be launched toward Bennu in late 2016, arrive at the asteroid in 2018, and return a sample of Bennus surface to Earth in 2023. Bennus experiences will tell us more about where our solar system came from and how it evolved. Like the detectives in a crime show episode, well examine bits of evidence from Bennu to understand more completely the story of the solar system, which is ultimately the story of our origin.

The video opens with an establishing shot of the galaxy and moves in to a nebula a vast cloud of gas and dust ejected from the explosions of dying stars. From observations of other star-forming regions in our galaxy, scientists have a good idea of the basic outlines of how our solar system came to be, according to Beshore. As shown in the animation, a nearby exploding star disrupts material in the nebula, causing part of it to collapse under its own gravity and form a disk of material surrounding the infant Sun.

Within this disk, bits of dust are flash heated to molten rock and solidify to become chondrules some of the building blocks of the solar system. Chondrules are shown in the animation as they clump together via electrostatic and gravitational forces to become asteroids and planets.

Chondrules may make up a large part of the material in Bennu. On planets like Earth, the original materials have been profoundly altered by geologic activity and chemical reactions with our atmosphere and water. We think Bennu may be relatively unchanged, so this asteroid is like a time capsule for us to examine, said Beshore. By analyzing the sample collected from Bennu, the OSIRIS-REx team will be able to examine some of the most pristine material to be found anywhere in the solar system.

Bennu may also harbor organic material from the young solar system. Organic matter is made of molecules containing primarily carbon and hydrogen atoms and is fundamental to terrestrial life. The analysis of any organic material found on Bennu will give scientists an inventory of the materials present at the beginning of the solar system that may have had a role in the origin of life. By bringing this material back to Earth, we can do a far more thorough analysis than we can with instruments on a spacecraft, because of practical limits on the size, mass, and energy consumption of what can be flown, said Beshore. We will also set aside returned materials for future generations to study with instruments and capabilities we cant even imagine now.

The mission also will contribute to NASAs Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which will identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with samples. ARM is part of NASAs plan to advance new capabilities needed for future human missions to Mars. OSIRIS-REx also will support the agencys efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions.

The early solar system was quite chaotic. Giant impact craters throughout the inner solar system indicate there may have been a late heavy bombardment by asteroids approximately 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, right around the origin of life on Earth. The video illustrates one theory for this. The massive gas giant planet Jupiter began to migrate inward closer to the Sun due to gravitational interactions with the outer gas giant planets. Jupiters gravity disrupted the asteroid belt, tossing many asteroids closer to the Sun, where some collided with the terrestrial planets, including Earth. This asteroid bombardment may have been a significant source of organic matter and water for the early Earth.

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New Animation Follows Long, Strange Trip Of Bennu

The Chandra X-ray Observatory Celebrates 15 Years of Science – Video

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The Chandra X-ray Observatory Celebrates 15 Years of Science
Fifteen years ago, NASA #39;s Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since its deployment on July 23, 1999, Chandra has helped revolutionize our ...

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The Chandra X-ray Observatory Celebrates 15 Years of Science - Video

NASA Kennedy Space Center – Cape Canaveral Florida – Space Shuttle Atlantis – USA VLOG 11 – Video

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NASA Kennedy Space Center - Cape Canaveral Florida - Space Shuttle Atlantis - USA VLOG 11
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NASA: The Greatest Cover Up, NASA’s Apollo Cover Up – NASA Astronaut Footage – Video

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NASA: The Greatest Cover Up, NASA #39;s Apollo Cover Up - NASA Astronaut Footage
All the footage shown and analyzed here was originally shot by NASA astronauts during the Apollo missions (1968-1972) on 16mm film, using what was known as the "Data Acquisition Camera" - the...

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NASA: The Greatest Cover Up, NASA's Apollo Cover Up - NASA Astronaut Footage - Video

NASAs Orion, designed to carry astronauts to Mars, to embark on first test flight in December 2014 – Video

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NASAs Orion, designed to carry astronauts to Mars, to embark on first test flight in December 2014
The Orion spacecraft, which is designed to ultimately carry astronauts to Mars, will undergo an unmanned flight test in early December. The spacecraft will be launched on a Delta IV rocket...

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NASAs Orion, designed to carry astronauts to Mars, to embark on first test flight in December 2014 - Video

NASA prepares to wake New Horizons ahead of historic Pluto flyby

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In what must be historys longest distance wake up call, NASAs New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation on December 6 at 3:00 pm EST. Now about 2.9 billion miles (4.6 billion km) from Earth, and 162 million miles (260 million km) from Pluto, the spacecraft will be put through a month-long preparation for its six month flyby of Pluto, with the primary phase of the mission slated to begin on January 15.

New Horizons' current state of hibernation means that most of the spacecrafts systems are shut down except for monitors and a weekly beacon-status transmission. So far, the probe has gone through 18 hibernation phases since it launched in 2006. This works out to 1,873 days in hibernation or two-thirds of the Pluto flyby mission.

The hibernation technique, which NASA pioneered, is a way of conserving onboard resources, cutting down on mission control personnel time, reducing time on NASAs Deep Space Network, and saving wear and tear on the spacecraft's electronics. New Horizons was reawoken periodically over the years to check the systems, rehearse the flyby, perform course corrections, and upload software updates. Last August, the probe was programmed to wake up on the scheduled December date. NASA says that 90 minutes after coming back online, New Horizons will transmit a confirmation back to Earth. However, this signal will not reach Earth for 4 hours and 25 minutes due to the enormous distances involved.

Once out of hibernation, mission control will put New Horizons through its final system checks and course corrections, download science data, and write and upload software updates. During the flyby, the probe will use its suite of seven scientific instruments to map Pluto, study its topology, temperatures, geology, and composition, as well as study the planet's moons and search for additional satellites.

One particular reason for the missions timing is that Pluto is currently in its late "summer" and scientists want to take the opportunity to study the planets atmosphere before it freezes again during its century-long winter. New Horizons instruments includes an advanced imaging infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, compact multicolor camera, high-resolution telescopic camera, two particle spectrometers, space-dust detector, and two radio experiments.

The US$650 million New Horizons mission was launched January 19, 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The unmanned 478 kg (1,054 lb) nuclear-powered spacecraft was sent on a 9.5-year mission to fly by Pluto and then on to study selected objects in the Kuiper Belt. Sent on a slingshot trajectory using the gravitational pull of Jupiter, New Horizons passed the orbit of Neptune on August 24 and will rendezvous with Pluto on July 14 of next year, which it will pass at a distance of 13,000 km (8,000 mi).

According to NASA, the mission was fast tracked due to the increasing knowledge about the Kuiper Belt. Since Pluto is the most accessible object originating from there, it seemed a logical way to gain direct information. In addition, it is the first mission sent to the only unvisited planet (if you're old school) in the Solar System.

NASA says that the flight team will be kept busy even after the flyby, because so much data will have been recorded that it wont all be transmitted to Earth until October 2016.

"We've worked years to prepare for this moment," says Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "New Horizons might have spent most of its cruise time across nearly three billion miles of space sleeping, but our team has done anything but, conducting a flawless flight past Jupiter just a year after launch, putting the spacecraft through annual workouts, plotting out each step of the Pluto flyby and even practising the entire Pluto encounter on the spacecraft. We are ready to go."

Source: NASA

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NASA prepares to wake New Horizons ahead of historic Pluto flyby