Earth swings away

houston - The earth throws a room on Friday. It is about the US spacecraft OSIRIS-REX, which is heading for an asteroid. As the probe flies, the earth's gravity gives him a swipe so that he can cross.

The OSIRIS-REX comes at 18. 52 hours Dutch time closest to the earth. He has a speed of over 30,000 kilometers per hour and then flies about 17,000 kilometers above the South Pole and Chile. At the same time some satellites are also flying. If necessary, the probe may dodge a bit to prevent collision. The OSIRIS REX is shown with good cameras from the earth.

The flight crew uses the lightning visit to test whether all systems on board work well.

The OSIRIS-REx was launched last year and will join the asteroid Bennu at the end of next year. There he will fly for two years to photograph and measure him from all angles. By 2020 he has to bump some material from the surface. A year after, the probe should begin to return to Earth, with some soil samples aboard, and if all goes well, the OSIRIS REX lands in 2023 in the United States. The samples can tell scientists about the origin of our solar system.

The rockblock Bennu runs in roughly the same course as the earth around the sun. He is about 500 meters in diameter, as big as a skyscraper. There is a chance that he will pour into the earth at the end of the next century. He is too small to destroy the planet and humanity in its entirety, but can do a lot of damage.

According to missile leader Dante Lauretta, more than seventy times more energy will be released than Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, and three times as much as the total of all nuclear weapons ever blown. Bennu makes a 4 km crater in average and about one kilometer deep. After the knock a pressure wave spreads at a speed of nearly 6000 kilometers per hour. Brokstukken can end hundreds of kilometers. And when the Bennu ends in the sea, a tsunami with waves of 28 to 56 meters high will rise.