{"id":85679,"date":"2018-12-10T19:22:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T03:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/nasas-newly-arrived-osiris-rex-spacecraft-discovers-water-on-bennu"},"modified":"2018-12-10T19:22:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T03:22:36","slug":"nasas-newly-arrived-osiris-rex-spacecraft-discovers-water-on-bennu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/nasas-newly-arrived-osiris-rex-spacecraft-discovers-water-on-bennu","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Newly Arrived OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Discovers Water on Bennu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PAgBCmJYEWo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve discovered water on the asteroid Bennu! Our OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up Bennu.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Recently analyzed data from NASA\u2019s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up its scientific target, the asteroid Bennu.<\/p>\n<p>During the mission\u2019s approach phase, between mid-August and early December, the spacecraft traveled 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km) on its journey from Earth to arrive at a location 12 miles (19 km) from Bennu on Dec. 3. During this time, the science team on Earth aimed three of the spacecraft\u2019s instruments towards Bennu and began making the mission\u2019s first scientific observations of the asteroid. OSIRIS-REx is NASA\u2019s first asteroid sample return mission.<\/p>\n<p>Data obtained from the spacecraft\u2019s two spectrometers, the OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) and the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES), reveal the presence of molecules that contain oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together, known as \u201chydroxyls.\u201d The team suspects that these hydroxyl groups exist globally across the asteroid in water-bearing clay minerals, meaning that at some point, Bennu\u2019s rocky material interacted with water. While Bennu itself is too small to have ever hosted liquid water, the finding does indicate that liquid water was present at some time on Bennu\u2019s parent body, a much larger asteroid.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/press-release\/nasa-s-newly-arrived-osiris-rex-spacecraft-already-discovers-water-on-asteroid\/\">https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/press-release\/nasa-s-newly-arrived-osir...-asteroid\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve discovered water on the asteroid Bennu! Our OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up Bennu. Recently analyzed data from NASA\u2019s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up its scientific target, the asteroid Bennu. During the mission\u2019s approach [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1492,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-security","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}