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Bennu (/ ˈ b ɛ n uː /) [1] is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. He may have been the original inspiration for the phoenix legends that developed in Greek mythology .
101955 Bennu has a mean diameter of 490 m (1,610 ft; 0.30 mi) and has been observed extensively by the Arecibo Observatory planetary radar and the Goldstone Deep Space Network. [5] [12] [13] Bennu was the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission that returned samples of the asteroid to Earth.
Bennu was chosen as the target of study because it is a "time capsule" from the birth of the Solar System. [25] Bennu has a very dark surface and is classified as a B-type asteroid, a sub-type of the carbonaceous C-type asteroids. Such asteroids are considered primitive, having undergone little geological change from their time of formation.
Bennu bird from an Egyptian papyrus. The Benben stone, named after the mound, was a sacred stone in the temple of Ra at Heliopolis (Egyptian: Annu or Iunu). It was the location on which the first rays of the sun fell. It is thought to have been the prototype for later obelisks, and the capstones of the great pyramids were based on its design.
TAGSAM is a robotic arm attached to the main body of the spacecraft that collects a sample from the asteroid, and puts the samples into the Earth return vehicle. [5] Bennu is about 500 meters in diameter and has very low gravity, so the arm must perform the collection in near zero gravity, yet still contend with some gravitational forces from the asteroid. [6]
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Asteroid 101955 Bennu is a B-type asteroid which is the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission. The mission seeks to characterize the asteroid by mapping the surface, studying the Yarkovsky effect, and retrieving a sample of the asteroid to return in 2023. The spacecraft was launched in 2016 and has been at Bennu since December 2018.
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