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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on asteroid Bennu in December 2018 and has since spent two years in orbit around the giant space rock. Last month, OSIRIS-REx completed its final Bennu mission task, collecting samples from the huge space rock that are now returning to Earth where they can be studied.
However, a recent study suggested that the asteroid Bennu may be empty, and the huge space inside is so vast that it could contain two football fields inside.
Scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder collected data from OSIRIS-REx to determine that there may be a vast void inside the asteroid.
Scientists measured Bennu’s gravitational field and found inconsistencies.
The asteroid rotates rapidly, while its gravitational field is weak, suggesting that the Bennu center is empty, or that it has a “soft” center.
Andrew French, a co-author of the new study and a former graduate student at CU Boulder, now at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said, “If you can measure the gravitational field with sufficient accuracy, that places rigid constraints on where the mass lies. find, even if you can’t see it directly. “
With the rapidly spinning asteroid, a hollow core could mean it may eventually become nothing when debris fragments are thrown into space.
Professor Daniel Sheeres said: “You could imagine that maybe in a million years or less the whole thing will fly away.
“It was kind of like someone was on the surface of the asteroid and throwing these marbles so they could be tracked.
READ MORE: Asteroid News: NASA Finds Evidence of ANCIENT RIVERS on Bennu
Professor Sheeres continued: “If its core has a low density, it will be easier to separate the entire asteroid.
“We were hoping to find out what happened to this asteroid over time, which can give us a better insight into how all of these small asteroids are changing over millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of years.
“Our results have exceeded our expectations.”
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