Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft will be visible from Earth tomorrow before it propels itself towards an asteroid.
The spacecraft will get as close as 11,000 miles (18,000 km) above Earth’s surface in order to generate enough gravitational force to slingshot itself in the direction of asteroid Bennu.
Those with telescopes should have their eyes set on the sky at 5.52 pm BST (12.52pm ET) in order to be in with a chance of seeing the vessel before it departs.
Thanks to a nudge from the Blue Planet, Rex will reach the asteroid in August 2018 where it will collect and return samples that experts believe may hold the building blocks of life.
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Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft will be visible from earth tomorrow before it propels itself towards an asteroid. Rex will get as close as 11,000 miles (18,000 km) above Earth’s surface in order to generate enough gravitational force to slingshot itself in the direction of Bennu
Earth will help Osiris-Rex muster up speeds of over 19,000 mph (30,578 kph) that are essential to reach the asteroid that sits over 140 million miles (225 million km) from Earth.
The spacecraft will start its sweep over Australia and will finish over Antarctica.
A telescope will be needed to see the object, which will be a tiny spec to the naked eye.
While observers take pictures of Osiris-Rex, the spacecraft will similarly be testing out its gadgets by taking images of the Earth and moon.
These instruments will come into considerable use when the spacecraft reaches its destination.
The asteroid crosses Earth’s orbit once every six years and is set to pass between the moon and our planet in 2135.
Scientists are worried the 0.3 mile (500 metre) wide asteroid’s orbit could be tweaked by Earth’s gravity as it passes by, causing it to smash into our planet later in the century.
Nasa has explained exactly how the spacecraft is built to be able to see the asteroid from as far away as a million miles (1.6 million km) and as close as just a few feet.
Osiris-Re xis currently on its journey towards an asteroid, where it will collect and return samples that experts believe may hold the building blocks of life. The spacecraft will be travelling for two years to reach Bennu, and plans to return to Earth in 2023
Nasa’s Osiris-Rex, which launched in September, will travel for two years to reach Bennu and should return to Earth in 2023.
Fitted with sensors, the craft will map out the surface of the asteroid in order to address basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system.
‘When you have a critical mission like this, you want redundancy,’ said Christian d’Aubigny, Ocams deputy instrument scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
‘The cameras have some amount of overlap in their capabilities.
‘They’re not exact copies of each other, but if one fails, they can still get the job done.’
Osiris-Rex will reach its asteroid target in 2018 after travelling an incredible four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometres) through space.
Bennu is one of more than 700,000 asteroids travelling through our solar system at the moment and was chosen as the target for this mission because it is the closest carbonaceous asteroid.
The asteroid, set to narrowly miss Earth in over a hundred years, could cause ‘immense suffering and death’ years later if its orbit is changed when it passes dangerously near to our planet.
‘That 2135 fly-by is going to tweak Bennu’s orbit, potentially putting it on course for the Earth later that century,’ Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at Arizona University, said earlier this year.
‘It may be destined to cause immense suffering and death,’ he added.
It is hard for astronomers to predict how the close run-in between Earth and the moon will affect Bennu’s orbit, but Lauretta estimates that it could shift it onto a collision course with our planet.
PolyCam (pictured) is a high-resolution camera that will acquire the first images of Bennu and perform the initial mapping of the asteroid. Named after a polymath, a human skilled at doing several different things, PolyCam can perform a wide range of optical tasks
Fitted with sensors, the craft will map out the surface of the asteroid in order to address basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system. Three cameras on the spacecraft will point towards Bennu, giving Osiris-Rex a clear view from all distances
But Nasa’s spacecraft hopes to capture the asteroid long before this time.
Three cameras on the spacecraft will point towards Bennu, giving Osiris-Rex a clear view from all distances.
PolyCam is a high-resolution camera that will acquire the first images of Bennu and perform the initial mapping of the asteroid.
Named after a polymath, a human skilled at doing several different things, PolyCam can perform a wide range of optical tasks.
It can refocus from infinity to about 500 feet (0.15 kilometres), which provides PolyCam the ability to switch from detecting stars and asteroids from far away to resolving small pebbles on the surface of the asteroid.
Once PolyCam performs an initial mapping of the asteroid, scientists will use the camera to identify a site where the spacecraft might collect a sample of Bennu’s surface that is as free of hazards as possible, such as boulders and dramatic slopes.
‘Already, at about two miles (3.5 kilometres), we’re dividing the surface of the asteroid into “go” and “no go” places,’ said Bashar Rizk, Ocams instrument scientist at the University of Arizona.
‘If a place is covered with hazards, we’re just not going to go there because we don’t want to risk damaging the spacecraft.’
The second camera to get a glimpse of Bennu is called MapCam.
MapCam is a medium-resolution camera that will map the asteroid in colour and search for satellites and dust plumes.
‘Asteroids are exposed to a lot of solar radiation because they have no atmosphere,’ Rizk said.
Bennu has been described as an Armageddon-style asteroid because there is a chance it may hit Earth. Pictured is a scene from the film Armageddon
Osiris-Rex will reach its asteroid target in 2018 after travelling an incredible four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometres) through space
To capture samples on the surface, the craft will hover over a specific area and ‘will be sent down at a very slow and gently’ 10 cm per second. It will only be in contact with the surface for five seconds as it vacuums up the targeted area. Pictured is the craft in April
Mapping the surface will not only help scientists sample rocks that could hold clues about the origin of our solar system, but it will also help them better predict the asteroid’s future movements and plan ways to deflect it away from Earth
‘They’re just mercilessly tortured by the sun every time they go around it.’
Because of a lack of water on the surface, the scientists predict Bennu’s regolith, a layer of loose material, including dust, soil and broken rock, is very dry, similar to the surface of the moon.
The surface material can easily stick to things, increasing the risk of contaminating the spacecraft during sampling.
‘We tried to think of everything that the spacecraft might be subjected to and account for that,’ Rizk said.
‘It’s a multi-step process of simulations, testing and design to ensure that the cameras work properly and that we get the best images we can.’
SamCam will document the sampling process.
The spacecraft will store the images captured by Ocams and send them to the Osiris-Rex team every few days.