NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020, but also made another interesting discovery. Scientists learned that its surface is like a plsatic ball pit, and had the spacecraft not fired its thrusters immediately after collecting the sample, it would have sunk into Bennu.
What does it mean for the surface to be like a plastic ball pit? Well, the particles making up Bennu’s exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a human stepped onto Bennu they would feel very little resistance, just like they would into play areas for kids. Now landing on the indefinitely delayed 16 Psyche asteroid may be an entirely different story when it finally gets off the ground.
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If Bennu was completely packed, that would imply nearly solid rock, but we found a lot of void space in the surface. Our expectations about the asteroid’s surface were completely wrong,” said Kevin Walsh, a member of the OSIRIS-REx science team from Southwest Research Institute.
