Can you land on an asteroid

Keeping humans safe as they explore an asteroid "is going to be really tricky. In the real world, that irrefutable motivation is absent. By , Obama's target date, there will have been four presidential elections. Any could result in the mission's cancellation, just as Obama canceled Bush's moon plan. As the deficit looms larger, "especially as the November elections come along I would just not be surprised if enthusiasm for some big human spaceflight mission ends," said Marcia Smith, founder of spacepolicyonline.

Leshin, the NASA official, responds that the agency is embarking on a research program that will lead to new, less costly technologies. The agency will build new spacecraft over a period of many years, so the costs don't pile up all at once, she said. She is optimistic that relatively soon, NASA astronauts will speed toward a rendezvous with an asteroid , and that it will be better than in the movies. It will be an incredible first. More from Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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Asteroids offer a treasure trove of information and knowledge to scientists. Studying them is like looking in a time-capsule in terms of planetary formation, and they offer many clues about where organic molecules originated from which resulted in the eventual formation of life on Earth. Bennu was named after another Egyptian deity, a mythological bird who is also associated with life and re-birth. Considered a NEO Near Earth Object because its path around the Sun brings it into close proximity to Earth, Bennu was chosen as the primary target due to this proximity and because of its physical properties.

It is classed as a carbonaceous asteroid, meaning it holds a large amount of carbon — an essential ingredient for life. Studies by Earth-based telescopes revealed Bennu to be roughly m across in diameter, and spectral analysis revealed the presence of a mineral called magnetite — usually formed around the presence of water.

The spacecraft is shown for scale. There were some special challenges for the OSIRIS-REx mission — one of the most notable is that it has to bring samples back to Earth while most missions into the solar system never make the return journey.

Space agencies may make space exploration look easy, but landing on an asteroid to collect samples is no easy feat. One difficulty is the relatively tiny size of asteroids mean they have extremely low gravity and can be difficult to orbit.

Asteroids can also be extremely rocky and made mostly of loose material, so finding a smooth enough surface to land on can be extremely difficult. JAXA successfully landed on asteroid Itokawa in with their Hayabusa spacecraft, and repeated the success with the follow-up mission Hayabusa2 on asteroid Ryugu.

He would unquestionably make his predecessor proud. NEAR Shoemaker was the first human-made object to orbit and land on an asteroid. The spacecraft will return to Earth in December of this year. It has been a privilege and an absolute delight to observe and learn from the accomplishments of our colleagues in Japan. In the months leading up to this moment, its team of scientists and engineers has remotely conducted two rehearsals, getting very near to Bennu without touching it.

But the scientific process — and nature itself — is full of surprises, some challenging, all wondrous. As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft approached Bennu, its suite of high-resolution cameras beamed hundreds of photos of the asteroid back to Earth, revealing not a beachlike surface, but a rugged, boulder-strewn landscape.

The team pored over these images for months, searching for a site both wide enough for a spacecraft the size of a large passenger van to touch down and maneuver without hitting a boulder and containing material fine enough to provide loose rubble to collect.

On Dec.