[Re-Upped, From 10.17.20] Watch/Listen To NASA/Lockheed Martin's Osiris Rex's "Touch And Go" Off Of Asteroid Bennu -- Beginning Monday At 1 PM Central Monday -- Through 7 PM Tuesday... Near Boulder Colorado.

The actual touch-down and retrieval of asteroid samples will be later in the day on Tuesday, we may may start listening on Monday -- get your reservation in by by tomorrow morning, Sunday at 10 AM CDT. [I'm already all set and dialed in, and may post some of it Monday and Tuesday, live, here -- as a later grade school level home science lesson for all kids doing remote schooling this year.]

Here is from the latest -- with lots of long term connects, to this blogger:

. . .NASA will broadcast coverage of a first for the agency as its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission attempts to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6:12 p.m. EDT.

Live coverage of the spacecraft’s descent to the asteroid’s surface for its “Touch-And-Go,” or TAG, maneuver, which will be managed by Lockheed Martin Space near Denver, will begin at 5 p.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Beginning with an orbit departure maneuver around 1:50 p.m., the full sequence of the complicated engineering feat will be covered on @OSIRISREx, and media and the public can ask questions using the hashtag #ToBennuandBack.

In addition to the broadcast Tuesday, Oct. 20, briefings and social media activities will cover the mission and asteroid science on Monday, Oct. 19.



OSIRIS-REx, which is about the size of a 15-passenger van, is currently orbiting the asteroid Bennu 200 million miles from Earth. Bennu contains material from the early solar system and may contain the molecular precursors to life and Earth’s oceans. The asteroid is about as tall as the Empire State Building and could potentially threaten Earth late in the next century, with a 1‐in‐2,700 chance of impacting our planet during one of its close approaches. OSIRIS-REx is now ready to take a sample of this ancient relic of our solar system and bring its stories and secrets home to Earth. . . .

Do check in on Tuesday evening -- could be quite a spectacular show. . . . and not sci fi -- but real space science, and history -- unfolding.

We are, as we said a few years ago -- floating several feet aboove the sheets, until then, in the evenings, between now, and then. . . smile.

She does indeed travel (as Lord Byron penned it), "with unwasted grace, through starry skies, one ray the less -- one small twist of fate, nonetheless. . . the darker shade of beauty, revealed. . . ."

नमस्ते