The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft conducted a two-year reconnaissance and sampling mission on asteroid Bennu, providing important data on the 500-meter-wide potentially hazardous debris/space rock pile. When OSIRIS-REx arrived on December 3, 2018, it needed complex navigation and precise maneuvers to make the mission work.
Experts from NASA’s Goddard Science Visualization Studio have created an incredible visualization of the path the spacecraft took during its explorations. A short film called “Web Around Asteroid Bennu” highlights the complexity of the mission, and the film was shown at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a festival celebrating outstanding works of computer-animated storytelling.
Other films in the festival include Disney’s Encanto and Warner Bros. Batman.
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Data visualizer Kel Elkins compiled the data for the movie, which shows OSIRIS-REx’s grid-like flight path as well as the touch-and-go, or TAG, maneuver to collect the sample from the asteroid’s surface.
“I started working with the trajectory data in 2015,” Elkins said. “And when you first see an image of all the different maneuvers, it looks like a rat’s nest. But it was really exciting to see these complex maneuvers in 3D space.”
The video lasts about four minutes in total, showing the flight path around Bennu from start to finish in one continuous frame.
Screenshot of the OSIRIS-REx orbital path visualization.
“From a trajectory and navigation standpoint, the team really did things that have never been done before in planetary exploration,” said Mike Morrow, deputy project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA Goddard. “We flew the spacecraft closer to this object than any spacecraft has ever flown before; we did maneuvers that were centimeters per second or millimeters per second to get the spacecraft exactly where it needed to be and change its orbit.
Taking their data visualization to the next level, Elkins and his colleagues plan to release a 360-degree version of Asteroid Bennu, which wraps the video around the viewer, for an interactive experience on VR headsets, mobile devices and online.
“As amazing as it is to see the trajectory in front of you in the original format, there’s something about putting the viewer in the middle and letting them look around,” Elkins said. “You are in space and OSIRIS-REx is flying around you. We’re really excited to be able to publish this additional 360-degree view.”
This illustration shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft leaving asteroid Bennu to begin its two-year journey back to Earth. Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
OSIRIS-REx is currently returning to Earth and will leave a sample in the Utah desert in September 2023. Once the sample is retrieved, the spacecraft is given a new mission and will head to one of the most infamous asteroids of all, the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, for an 18-month study. The mission will be renamed OSIRIS-APEX, short for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer.
Source: NASA
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