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Asteroid Bennu

This is from You Tube via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 12/12/20.

A video of Asteroid Bennu, first of all with speeded up spin, then zooming in to a prominent rock on the surface (given the name Simurgh apparently,) as shot from spacecraft OSIRIS-REx shortly to try to land and get a sample of Bennu to bring back to Earth.

It’s still thrilling to me that we as a species can do and see things like this.

Another Cubic Asteroid

This one is 101955 Bennu as featured in Astronomy Picture of the Day for 13/11/2018 and photographed by the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer aka (OSIRIS-REx) on its mission to map the asteroid’s surface.

The video collapses Bernnu’s 4.25 hour day into 7 seconds:-

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