Posted on 08/21/2018 8:21:46 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft began its final approach toward the big near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Friday (Aug. 17), NASA officials said. The milestone also marks the official start of OSIRIS-REx's "asteroid operations" mission phase, they added.
OSIRIS-REx is still about 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Bennu and won't arrive in orbit around the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) space rock until Dec. 3. The $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission — whose name is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — launched on Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
If all goes according to plan, the probe will study Bennu from orbit for more than two years, gathering a variety of data. OSIRIS-REx will also spiral down to snag a sizable sample of asteroid material before leaving Bennu in March 2021. This cosmic dirt and gravel will come down to Earth in a special return capsule in September 2023.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Per WIKIPEDIA: "101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ36)[11] is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on September 11, 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table with the second-highest cumulative rating on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale.[12] It has a cumulative 1-in-2,700 chance of impacting Earth between 2175–2199."
It always amazes me how long it takes to get to targets like this. Two years, screaming through space, so we can collect a sample, and then wait a few more years to get it back. With these time scales, I wonder how many people see a project through to completion.
No matter what you think that you are gaining, what good does it do you to lose your soul?
Okay, I’ll bite.
How does exploring a dangerous asteroid cause one to lose their soul?
Well, one reason is that things in space are just a long way away, but another is that our spacecraft can't carry very much fuel and as a result have to spend most of their time coasting.
In the case of the OSIRIS-REx mission, they used a "gravity-assist" maneuver to accelerate the spacecraft without the use of very much fuel by means of Earth's gravitational field and relative speed with respect to the target; this took a long time to set up.
Without the gravity-assist maneuver the mission would not have been possible; the amount of fuel necessary would have required a more expensive booster rocket to get the spacecraft into space; this would have caused the mission go too far over budget.
Thanks for the reply - I get all of that. I do hope in my lifetime we develop a feasible propulsion method that solves these problems.
My daughter spent her summer internship working on this project with Lockheed-Martin. I think it is great that NASA is back in space instead of propagandizing climate change and “recognizing the scientific contributions of muslim countries”.
OSIRIS-REx continuing the mysterious obsession of NASA with Old Kingdom Egyptian religion.
OSIRIS morphed from SOKAR (the god of the Underworld, sometimes called ANUBIS, guardian of the honorable Dead) into god of life and death - especially with the added RE which is one spelling of RA the Egyptian god of Light and Resurrection - not the Christian sort, but Resurrection with the gods in eternal life.
The added x to RE makes it REX (the King in Latin).
What is NASA trying to tell us, or is this Egyptian naming all a gigantic coincidence?
What is NASA trying to tell us, or is this Egyptian naming all a gigantic coincidence?
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Not purely a coincidence. The acronym, while using words relevant to the application, is obviously contrived enough to recognize that they actually wanted it to make this reference.
I’m referring to almost every NASA project has an Egyptian connection. Not just to this particular one.
NASA could easily use other words or words in a different order. So you are saying that this is not a pure coincidence, but rather that NASA is trying to tell us something, something hidden otherwise by using ancient Egyptian religions nomenclature?
It’s lame and geeky.
Like when nasa issue statements from its machines as though the machine itself is talking.
Well yes, I’m definitely agreeing with you that it is not a coincidence. That’s what I meant when I said the words in the acronym appear contrived enough that it’s fairly obvious they were going for this specific arrangement/pattern of characters. Now, are they saying that Osiris is king, or do they just think that using old mythological names is entertaining to use, such as naming the satellites of most of the planets in our solar system from the roman pantheon, it’s much harder to know.
It’s lame and geeky.
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or that’s what they want us to think. Then there is the issue of launch times coinciding with various aliments over Egypt of significance to the old gods - this has been true since at least Apollo times.
Speaking of lame and geeky, I’m tempted to calculate what it would take in terms of an impact to that regolith that would improve its chances of hitting Earth.
It would be an interesting novel: How much english would you have to put on that ball in order to put it in the corner pocket?
Some shots only take a breath to get them going in the right direction.
I’m not saying this is what is happening, but what if you sent up a nuclear weapon designed to put enough english on that asteroid such that it hit us?
You could get down to a world population of 500,000 in a very efficient manner.
Osiris is the Egyptian god of rebirth.
Why name this mission with this tortured acronym, and then add ‘rex’ for good measure?
These novels just write themselves.
OSIRIS was never ‘king’. OSIRIS was a god, But RE or RA is the chief god only just a step beneath MAAT (The Cosmic Principle). The name would have been OSIRIS-REX not OSIRIS-REx had they meant OSIRIS to be seen as ‘king’.
This is a puzzle which is not resolvable really without some inside NASA information which will never happen. We can only worry the edges ...
This penchant is too consistent over the decades to be mere entertainment, especially as most people do not have a clue who OSIRIS or RE were, let alone any knowledge of history current or historical, let alone ancient or Egyptian (other than the fake consensus history on TV channels).
NASA is a propaganda agency. You are either knowingly or unwittingly supporting their lies. Their “spacecraft” are nothing more than CGI.
Is the Earth flat?
Respectfully, you have been deeply brainwashed.
This in NOT an insult.
It is probably not your fault.
YHWH created the heavens and the earth. You will find the truth in the Bible starting in Genesis 1:14.
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