New insights about surface, structure of asteroid Bennu
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu’s surface in 2020, forces measured during the interaction provided scientists with a direct test of the poorly understood near-subsurface physical properties of rubble-pile asteroids. Now, a new study has characterized the layer just below the asteroid’s surface as composed of weakly bound rock fragments containing twice the void space as the overall asteroid. …read more