NASA asks people to help decide where to land spacecraft on asteroid

NASA is well aware that asteroids can be rocky, causing difficulty in landing on sample collection site. Hence, the space agency needs extra pair of eyes and has asked citizen scientists to volunteer and help choose the site and to look for anything scientifically interesting.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been at asteroid Bennu since December 2018 with the goal of gathering samples from the space rock and returning it back to Earth for further analysis. For that the team needs to find a safe landing and sample collection side, a task which is not really easy.

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The team discovered that one of the biggest challenges for this is that Bennu has an extremely rocky surface and each boulder poses a great danger to the craft’s safety. Thus, in order to speed up the sample selection process, the team has requested citizen scientist volunteers to develop a hazard map by counting boulders.

Once registered, the volunteer would have to do the same tasks that planetary scientists do: measuring Bennu’s boulders and mapping its rocks and craters with the help of a simple web interface. Also, the volunteer could mark other scientifically interesting features on the asteroid that would require further investigation too.

In order to begin mapping, the volunteer is first given a tutorial to get started along with additional user assistance and livestreaming sessions. One would require a large computer screen, and a mouse or trackpad to make precise marks.

OSIRIS-REx project manager, Rich Burns is said, “Bennu has surprised us with an abundance of boulders. We ask for citizen scientists’ help to evaluate this rugged terrain so that we can keep our spacecraft safe during sample collection operations.”

The Bennu mapping campaign will continue till July 10, 2019, when the mission begins the sample site selection process. As soon as primary and secondary sites are selected, the spacecraft will initiate closer reconnaissance to map the two sites to sub-centimeter resolution.

The mission’s sampling maneuver is scheduled for July 2020, and the spacecraft will return to Earth with its cargo in September 2023.