OSIRIS-REx Exciting Mission to the Asteroid Bennu
The movie Don't Look Up was interesting if not weird. However you feel about the movie, its premise of a comet is coming to destroy Earth is low, but not impossible. That's one of the main reasons NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx Mission to explore the asteroid Bennu. It's not a comet, however, the asteroid is close enough to cause damage."OSIRIS-REx" is an acronym that stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer.The OSIRIS-REx mission sent a space probe to Bennu back in December 2018 to "touch down" on the near-Earth asteroid Bennu some 200 million miles away to collect a sample and return to Earth in 2023. Yes, 200 million miles is NEAR Earth.The $1.16 billion OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first American spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid if the mission is successful.Bennu is one of the millions of asteroids in our Solar System. However, the…