OSIRIS-REx – Global Model of Asteroid Bennu

  • Released Wednesday, February 26, 2020
View full credits

Looping animation of asteroid Bennu rotating. This 3D model of Bennu was created using 20cm resolution laser altimetry data and imagery taken by OSIRIS-REx.

When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a spinning top. This major validation, however, was accompanied by a major surprise. Scientists had expected Bennu’s surface to consist of fine-grained material like a sandy beach, but instead OSIRIS-REx was greeted by a rugged world littered with boulders – the size of cars, the size of houses, the size of football fields.



The main science goal of OSIRIS-REx is to briefly touch down on Bennu and collect a sample for return to Earth, but the asteroid’s unexpected roughness could pose a hazard to the spacecraft. Areas for safely touching down are fewer and smaller than anticipated, and OSIRIS-REx will have to navigate to them with unprecedented accuracy.


The 3D animations on this page were created using laser altimetry data and imagery of Bennu taken by OSIRIS-REx.

Short clip of the northern hemisphere of Bennu. This 3D model of Bennu was created using 20cm resolution laser altimetry data and imagery taken by OSIRIS-REx.

Short clip of the southern hemisphere of Bennu, highlighting a large boulder nicknamed "BenBen." This 3D model of Bennu was created using 20cm resolution laser altimetry data and imagery taken by OSIRIS-REx.

Short clip of the equatorial region of Bennu. This 3D model of Bennu was created using 20cm resolution laser altimetry data and imagery taken by OSIRIS-REx.

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Data provided by NASA/University of Arizona/CSA/York University/MDA.

This page was originally published on Wednesday, February 26, 2020.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:10 AM EDT.

Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Datasets used

  • LIDAR [OSIRIS-REx: OLA]

    ID: 1055
    Sensor: OLA

    The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) is a scanning LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). LIDAR is similar to RADAR, but it uses light instead of radio waves to measure distance. OLA emitted laser pulses at the surface of Bennu, which reflected back from the surface and returned a portion of the laser pulse to the LIDAR detector. By carefully measuring the time difference between the outgoing pulse and the incoming pulse, the distance from the spacecraft to the surface of Bennu was computed using the speed of light. This allowed OLA to provide high-resolution topographical information about Bennu during the mission.

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • Imagery [OSIRIS-REx: OCAMS]

    ID: 1063
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: OCAMS

    The OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) consists of three cameras: PolyCam, MapCam, and SamCam. These cameras captured a wealth of imagery during OSIRIS-REx’s time at asteroid Bennu. To help mission planners select a site on Bennu for sample collection, OCAMS provided global image mapping of the asteroid’s surface and more detailed images of potential sample sites. OCAMS also recorded the sampling event during the touch-and-go (TAG) maneuver.

    Credit: NASA/University of Arizona/CSA/York University/MDA

    See all pages that use this dataset

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.