Watch OSIRIS-REx's Complex Orbital Path Around Bennu in This Cool Animation

By Nancy Atkinson - August 7, 2022 at 11:50 AM UTC | Planetary Science
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The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft conducted a two-year reconnaissance and sample collection at the asteroid Bennu, providing crucial data about the 500-meter-wide potentially hazardous rubble pile /space rock. When OSIRIS-REx arrived on Dec. 3, 2018, it needed some tricky navigation and precise maneuvers to make the mission work.

Experts at NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio created an amazing visualization of the path the spacecraft took during its investigations. A short film called "A Web Around Asteroid Bennu" highlights the complexity of the mission, and the film is being shown at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a festival honoring standout works of computer animated storytelling.

Other films in the festival include Disney's "Encanto" and Warner Brothers' "The Batman."

Data visualizer Kel Elkins compiled the data for the film, which shows the web-like flight path for OSIRIS-REx, 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 complicated maneuvers in 3D space."

The video runs about four minutes in total, showing the flight path around Bennu from beginning to end in a single, continuous shot.

"From a trajectory and navigation perspective, the team really did things that have never been done before in planetary exploration," said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA Goddard. "We flew the spacecraft closer to this object than any spacecraft has ever been flown before; we did maneuvers that were centimeters per second, or millimeters per second, in order to get the spacecraft exactly where it needed to be and to change its orbit."

Taking their data visualization to the next level, Elkins and colleagues plan to release a 360-degree version of "A Web Around Asteroid Bennu" that 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 of it and letting them look around," Elkins said. "You're in space and OSIRIS-REx is flying around you. We're really excited to be able to publish this additional 360-degree view."

OSIRIS-REx is currently on its way back towards Earth, and in September 2023, will drop off a sample in the Utah desert. Once the sample is retrieved, the spacecraft has been given a new mission, and it will be heading to one of the most infamous asteroids of them all, the potentially hazardous asteroid Apophis for an 18 month study. The mission will be renamed OSIRIS-APEX, which is short for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer.

Source: NASA

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com