NASA has provided more details about Bennu, the nickname “father of asteroids.”
This star is moving in the direction of our planet and its body is active, as confirmed by the space agency through a press release.
Scientists sent to the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2018 to get more information about it.
Bennu travels at a speed of 101,389 kilometers per hour and has a diameter of 500 meters.
The existence of the asteroid was already known; The space mission sought something else and achieved it: it observed the emission of particles from this body, which implies that it is “alive.”
Using the cameras on board, three emissions of dust particles (1 to 10 centimeters in diameter) were recorded between January and February of this year.
The theories about this behavior are that Benny is collided with meteorites, the phyllosilicates that form the asteroid are being dehydrated and that the rocks are being destroyed by temperature changes.
“Active asteroids are objects that have typical asteroid orbits, but show some kind of activity similar to that of a comet, either in the form of a coma or tail, or by the expulsion of dust,” explains Javier Licandro, researcher of the group of OSIRIS image processing job.
The asteroid’s orbit does not generate a greater danger of collision, but it presents a great question in the study of stars in the sky.
Source: Rpp
