A spacecraft orbiting an asteroid sent a photo of our house. OSIRIS-REx captured the frame a few days before going into orbit around the asteroid Bennu on New Year's Eve.
In the photo of December 19, 2018, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft showed the asteroid Bennu (top right), separated from the vehicle by 43 km, and the Earth and the Moon (bottom left), located 110 million km. Bennu reaches a width of 500 m and is considered the smallest celestial object, into whose orbit a spacecraft A tiny asteroid (500 m) resembles a large bright ball in a long exposure image. At a distance of 110 million km, the Earth looks like a white point, and the Moon is a smaller point.
OSIRIS-REx is the first spacecraft to orbit such a small celestial body at a distance of 1600 m. Next year, the spacecraft will try to collect several samples of a carbon-rich asteroid and return them to Earth in 2023. The ship was launched in 2016 from Florida.
