La mission OSIRIS-REx vers l'astéroïde Bennu
va décoller le 8 septembre de Cap Canaveral sur une fusée Atlas V.
2 ans de voyages pour aller tenter de prélever quelques centaines de grammes de matériaux de l' astéroide, pour revenir sur terre aprés de nouveau 2 ans de voyage !
lire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx
et l' article :
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/...eroid-pebbles/Chasing Bennu: Inside NASA’s daring mission to capture asteroid pebbles
A few weeks out from the launch of OSIRIS-REx, Ars checks in with its "anxious" PI.
ERIC BERGER - 8/12/2016,
The idea has since become a spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, now resting in a hangar at Kennedy Space Center. The rocket that will launch it into deep space on Sept. 8 stands nearby. If all goes well for OSIRIS-REx over the next two years, it will fall into orbit around the 500-meter asteroid Bennu, and spend the next 700 days carefully studying the asteroid to determine where best to try to grab a sample for a return to Earth.
Only then, sometime in July, 2020, will the real challenge begin. How, exactly, does one reach out and grab some pebbles off the surface of an asteroid and live to tell the tale? Ars spoke with Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and the mission's principal investigator, to get the details.
Grabbing asteroid dust
..........................
-----
Envoyé par Moinsdewatt 