Asteroid Bennu shock: Is NASA about to answer humanity’s biggest question?

Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said: “Although OSIRIS-REx was designed to collect a sample from an asteroid with a beach-like area, the extraordinary in-flight performance to date demonstrates that we will be able to meet the challenge that the rugged surface of Bennu presents.

“That extraordinary performance encompasses not only the spacecraft and instruments, but also the team who continues to meet every challenge that Bennu throws at us.”

Nightingale, the northern-most site, features multiple possible sampling regions in this site, which is set in a small crater encompassed by a 459 feet diameter crater.

Kingfisher is located in a small crater, 26 feet in diameter, near Bennu’s equator at 11 degrees north latitude. It is also known to have the strongest spectral signature for hydrated minerals.

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