NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is busy mapping the asteroid Bennu, sending back a treasure trove of images revealing an amazingly fragmented surface resembling a roughly spherical rock pile. In the shot below, captured 28 March, the spacecraft provides an angled view of Bennu’s equator and northern hemisphere as seen from an altitude of about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles). The field of view is 52 metres (170 feet) across. To put the scene in perspective, the largest boulder visible at upper left measures 14.5 metres (48 feet) across, or about the length of a large lorry, or tractor-trailer.
The shot below, recorded 29 March, shows a 48-metre-wide (157-foot-wide) field of view in Bennu’s northern hemisphere with a wide range of rock sizes. For scale, the small rock resting atop the boulder at lower left measures 2.5 metres (8 feet) wide, or about the length of a horse.
