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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which achieved a record orbit at asteroid Bennu earlier this month, has returned an image that, at first glance, is unremarkable. The photo, below, features two bright dots — the larger one on the right is Bennu, and the smaller one on the left is Earth and the moon as seen from a distance of 114 million kilometers / 71 million miles.
The image was captured by OSIRIS-REx’s black and white NavCam1 camera on December 19, 2018, according to the Bennu mission website. The asteroid’s brightness is due to the image’s five second exposure time, which was long enough to make both the Earth and moon visible.
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| Photo provided by NASA |
The OSIRIS-REx probe has been tasked with exploring Bennu, a large asteroid located around 70 million miles from Earth. On December 31, OSIRIS-REx became the first spacecraft to successfully orbit an object as small as Bennu, where it will remain before briefly touching down in 2020 to acquire a small sample.
The spacecraft has returned a number of images to its team on Earth, including close-up shots of the asteroid’s rocky surface. The latest image joins the iconic Pale Blue Dot photo as a rare example of space photography that puts Earth’s tiny place in the universe into perspective. Future images from OSIRIS-REx will be shared in the mission’s Gallery.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)