I'm 2.3 million miles away, so it takes time for commands to travel between me & Earth. Today, my team on Earth will see events 18.5 mins after they happen here at Bennu. This time lag doesn't allow for live commanding of flight activities, so I'll perform TAG autonomously. My team has already given me everything I need for today's sample collection event! The final commands for today's activities were uplinked to me on Monday morning, and I received the official GO command this morning.

At the very end of the TAGSAM arm is the sample collector head - it's sort of like my hand, and it'll be the only part of me that touches Bennu's surface while gathering a sample.

Image details: bit.ly/2G5SFhm The collector head is very flexible, and is connected via a hinge-like design so that it can tilt with Bennu's surface. It's also pretty small, measuring 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter - a bit bigger than a dinner plate! 🍽

Bennu: an asteroid that throws marble-sized rocks, has building-sized boulders, and didn't give us many options for a sample collection site.

So, if collecting a sample from Bennu is so challenging, why are we doing it? Because Bennu is special! It's like an ancient artifact, and it has a lot of stories to share with us 📖

Image details: bit.ly/3iw4hIF

Okay… let's be honest. Microgravity is one thing, but Bennu's surface has definitely been another thing to wrangle. I mean… look at it. So, next month I'll be navigating into a space that's about 3 parking spaces wide and surrounded by building-sized boulders… talk about tricky.

You might recall from our 1st rehearsal that it takes 16 mins for commands to travel between me and Earth. So my team on Earth sees events 16 mins after they happen here at Bennu. You may also recall that this time lag doesn't allow for live commanding of flight activities. But my team has already given me everything I need for today's rehearsal! The final commands for today's activites were uplinked to me on Monday morning, and I received the official GO command this morning.

It’s #NationalPetMonth
Plz send pet pics 🐶🐱🐍🐰

Here are a few of my pet rocks.
bit.ly/3dTKhNp
bit.ly/367Wco8 These boulders are located next to site Nightingale. Obviously they’re too big to pick up, but there are lots of other smaller rocks here that are sample worthy 👍

bit.ly/3e33jkB

T-7 minutes to orbit departure for the first rehearsal of my Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event. Who’s ready? I'm ~140 million miles (~230 million km) from Earth, and it takes 13 minutes for any message to travel between us, which means that my team on Earth sees events 13 minutes after they happen here at Bennu. It also means that live commanding of flight activities isn't possible.

A closer look at those cherry-tomato-sized pebbles… we also have some lime-sized pebbles here.

Image details: bit.ly/2UdG6Um

https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/1224747143769935873

12 of Bennu’s surface features now officially have International Astronomical Union-approved names! OSIRIS-REx team members proposed names for the features, which are inspired by birds & bird-like creatures in mythology, & the places associated with them. bit.ly/2wwfHJp The large boulder spine in Bennu’s southern hemisphere is now called Tlanuwa Regio. It’s named for the giant birds who scattered the Earth with pieces of a serpent that turned into standing pillars of rocks in Cherokee mythology.

2020 is gonna be a huge year. Here’s what I’m looking forward to!

#ToBennuAndBack Over the next few months, I’ll perform medium and low passes over sites Nightingale and Osprey — getting as close as 820 ft (250 m) to the surface 😱

After a year at asteroid Bennu today’s the day. We have a sample collection site! #XMarksTheSpot

Starting now, tune in for the announcement! Some of the material in one of these images will be coming back to Earth 😱

Congratulations to our wonderful team members whose accomplishments were recognized at the 2019 NASA Agency Honor Awards Ceremony on September 5 🏆🏅

A round of applause for… Diane Lambert from @uarizona, Jason Leonard, and Daniel Wibben from @KinetXSNAFD were all awarded an Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal
 
Amy Simon from @NASAGoddard was awarded an Exceptional Scientific Achievement

The spacecraft is about the size of a 15-passenger van, so for a familiar perspective, here’s what each candidate site on Bennu would look like in a standard parking lot… Nightingale, which lies within the white circle, covers roughly 6 parking spaces. Sampling regions in this site range from 16 ft (5 m) to 33 ft (10 m) in radius.

Here’s the location of each of the 4 candidate sites on Bennu. The sites are named after birds native to Egypt 🦅 which complements the mission’s other naming conventions – Egyptian deities (the asteroid and spacecraft) and mythological birds (surface features on Bennu). Located in Bennu’s far north, Nightingale is set in a large crater that is 459 ft (140 m) in diameter. Nightingale contains mostly fine-grained, dark material and has the lowest albedo and surface temperature of the four sites.

Explore Nightingale: bit.ly/2KGBuS2

Here’s Bennu’s darkest boulder again - but this time we’re viewing it by looking up from the southern hemisphere. The rocks in the region that looked flat and well-behaved when viewed from overhead end up showing their unruly side at this angle.

bit.ly/2EHS5CH Look at the *height* on that rock circled in red. The shadows from the image on the right suggest that there is some elevation (even though it looks relatively flat), but if you really want to understand the terrain, there’s no substitute for having a bunch of viewing angles.

This is kind of a weird angle, but the boulder in the lower left here is one of the darkest on Bennu -- with an albedo of 3.3%. Bennu's global average albedo is a little lighter at 4.4%, but that's still as dark as charcoal.

bit.ly/2H4ZNIP This boulder is pretty recognizable because of that light-colored rock laying on it. The rock is 6.2 ft (1.9 m) long -- about the same height as a person.

This was taken on Mar. 29 (during Flyby 4B) from up over the northern hemisphere, while looking "down" toward the equator.

Today I executed Asteroid Approach Maneuver-1, the first in a series of engine burns to dramatically reduce my speed relative to Bennu. I'll conduct three more AAMs over the next couple months, preparing to match the asteroid's speed and safely fly around it. #WeBrakeForAsteroids Before my braking maneuver this morning, I was cruising along at about 1,099 miles per hour (491 m/sec) relative to Bennu. At that clip, I could have traveled from New York to Miami in an hour. ⏱ #WeBrakeForAsteroids