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An interplanetary visitor has arrived at asteroid Bennu.
On Monday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached the relatively small asteroid after an over two-year journey through the solar system. The 1,600-foot diameter space rock, about the height of the Empire State Building, is of great interest to scientists as the lump of rubble and organic materials might provide a future fuel depot for deep space missions, and likely holds ancient clues about our solar system’s formation.
Now that OSIRIS-REx — short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — has arrived at Bennu, the eight-foot-long spacecraft will spend more than a year and a half surveying the asteroid, in preparation to carefully descend to the ground and perform its ambitious, primary mission. Read more…
More about Space, Nasa, Asteroid Mining, Asteroid, and Bennu
Planetary Resources, the space mining company backed by Google’s Larry Page and Braintree founder Bryan Johnson, has taken another step in its quest to actually mine resources from asteroids and other planetary bodies. The company successfully launched its Arkyd-6 CubeSat, which is holding an experimental technology designed to detect water resources in space.