Top Science News

When it comes to temporary asteroids, NASA doesn't garner run-of-the-mill expanse rocks. The direct of NASA's stylish angulate assignment is not exclusive intellection to be flush in the antiquity blocks of life, it also has a quantity — although a remote one — of threatening Earth in the assemblage 2182.

The angulate 1999 RQ36 is the direct of a new pilotless spacecraft, which NASA plans to start in 2016 to amass a distribution from the expanse sway and convey it to Earth by 2023.

The mission's leaders spent a daylong instance surveying possible destinations for the mission, and finally effected on 1999 RQ36. NASA calls the assignment OSIRIS-Rex, which is brief for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer.

"We went finished a full program of selection criteria," OSIRIS-Rex's support capital investigator poet Lauretta, a planetary individual at the University of Arizona, told SPACE.com. "There are over 500,000 asteroids known. [1999 RQ36] looks really optimum." [Video: The OSIRIS-Rex Mission to 1999 RQ36]

A potentially chanceful asteroid

In constituent to dig up clues most our solar system's history, the OSIRIS-Rex assignment haw be healthy to support Earth fend soured potentially deadly expanse rocks. That's because angulate 1999 RQ36 — which is most 1,900 feet (580 meters) panoramic — is open enemy No. 1 for expanse sway scientists.

"1999 RQ36 has the maximal quantity of impacting the Earth of some famous Potentially Hazardous Asteroid," according to a assignment offering submitted to NASA by the OSIRIS-Rex in 2009. [Infographic: How NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Works]

A past computing institute that the angulate has a 1-in-1,800 quantity of hitting Earth in the assemblage 2170, and a 1-in-1,000 chanceof slamming into us in 2182.

While those are thin odds, they place 1999 RQ36 at the crowning of the danger list.

"I wouldn't go acquire angulate insurance," Lauretta said. "We're OK for 150 eld or so. We're not action the Earth from unmediated danger."

Still, he said studying the angulate and its itinerary up nearby could support us meliorate prognosticate the risk, and summary a strategy to protect ourselves if necessary. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

One reason the probability of Earth impact can't be meliorate predicted is because scientists don't fully wager the Yarkovsky effect, which causes asteroids to accelerate slightly when they absorb light and then re-emit it as heat.

"[1999 RQ36's] itinerary is currently substantially famous because of optical and radar accumulation but the long-term motion is inferior substantially apprehended because of the poorly circumscribed Yarkovsky effect," said Donald Yeomans, trainer of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, who is not direct involved with the OSIRIS-Rex mission. "This assignment should earmark a much meliorate discernment of these effects erst the asteroid's size, mass, turning characteristics and thermal properties are studied."

Target: Asteroid 1999 RQ36

One of the most captivating features of angulate 1999 RQ36 for scientists is its size: It is as large as fivesome football fields, which effectuation it won't be spinning likewise alacritous when OSIRIS-Rex approaches. The angulate should also hit a large supply of retrograde dirt, or regolith, on its opencast for cushy sampling.

1999 RQ36 is intellection to be carbonaceous, or flush in carbon and nonsynthetic material, and probable to include some of the antiquity blocks of life, much as the amino acids utilised to build the proteins alive to chronicle on Earth.

"We cannot verify from telescopes just what kind of material, but we believe it's the sort of clog that came in finished the Earth's atmosphere after liquefied oceans prototypal formed, perhaps by 4.45 1000000000 eld ago, and provided those antiquity blocks," said OSIRIS-Rex capital investigator Mike Drake of the University of Arizona, during a programme conference yesterday (May 25).

In fact, the angulate is a fraudulence B-class carboniferous asteroid, a class that has never been unnatural up nearby by a satellite before, and should provide an unprecedented opportunity to wager most the history of the solar grouping and the origin of chronicle on Earth.

The touchable inside 1999 RQ36 is intellection to fellow to the rattling formation of our solar grouping around 4.56 1000000000 eld ago. While the expanse sway now orbits relatively nearby Earth — making it a convenient direct for temporary — scientists think it is a fragment of an modify large angulate that collided with added sway in the important angulate track between Mars and Jupiter, a some meg eld ago.

Building on angulate successes

The OSIRIS-Rex assignment is not NASA's prototypal assignment to an asteroid, but it module be the prototypal U.S. enquiry to retrieve samples and convey them to Earth. Only Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, which returned samples of the angulate Itokawa to Earth in June 2010 after a seven-year journey, has performed a similar feat.

NASA has dispatched probes to meet asteroids before. The agency's NEAR satellite rendezvoused with the angulate Eros and ultimately touched downbound on that expanse sway at the end of its assignment in Feb 2001.

NASA's Dawn probe, meanwhile, is nearing the angulate planetoid — the second-largest expanse sway in the angulate belt. Dawn module itinerary planetoid for some months, then nous soured to meet Ceres, the maximal angulate in the solar system.

But the NEAR and Dawn missions are exclusive temporary asteroids. OSIRIS-Rex module alter pieces backwards home. And that has scientists brimming with anticipation.

"Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is a perfect direct for distribution convey and I can't wait to wager the elating results from both the in situ power activities and the distribution convey analysis," Yeomans said.

You crapper follow SPACE.com Senior Writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Managing editor Tariq Malik contributed to this report. Follow SPACE.com for the stylish in expanse power and expedition programme on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• How NASA's Asteroid Sample Return Mission Will Work (Infographic)
• Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space

Source