Particle Plumes Surprise Scientists Preparing To Land Spacecraft On Asteroid - NASA

Mysterious particle plumes observed by a spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Bennu have thus far baffled scientists, who hope to learn more by landing the spacecraft, scooping up a sample and returning to Earth, NASA investigators told reporters on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2019) Mysterious particle plumes observed by a spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Bennu have thus far baffled scientists, who hope to learn more by landing the spacecraft, scooping up a sample and returning to Earth, NASA investigators told reporters on Tuesday.

"We are seeing Bennu regularly eject material into outer space," OSIRIS-Rex mission Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta said. "We don't know the mechanism that is causing this right now. In fact, we're still learning how to process the data and use the information to make sense of what is going on."

NASA noted that the first stream was observed on January 6, with a total of 11 similar events observed thus far. Low velocity particles tend to orbit the asteroid and eventually fall back to the surface while faster moving streams escape into interstellar space, it said.

The OSIRIS-Rex probe was launched in 2016 to explore Bennu, the smallest body ever orbited by spacecraft, with a width about half the height of the Empire State Building, NASA explained in a separate press release.

Studying Bennu will allow researchers to learn more about the origins of our solar system, the sources of water and organic molecules on Earth, the resources in near-Earth space, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth, according to the release.

After landing on the surface and collecting a sample, the spacecraft is slated to arrive back on Earth in 2023, the release said.