Apr 08, 2019

The spacecraft continues Detailed Survey: Baseball Diamond phase operation. Each week during this phase the spacecraft executes a flyby of Bennu at a different observing angle.

On April 4 and 5, the spacecraft performed Flyby 5, during which it observed Bennu with PolyCam, OLA and OTES at the 12:30 pm local solar time position. The pass was divided into two phases – A and B. Flyby 5A occurred over Bennu’s northern hemisphere at a distance of 5 km, and the spacecraft slewed east, west and straight down to image every 12° of Bennu’s rotation. Flyby 5B occurred over Bennu’s southern hemisphere at a distance of 3.06 km, and the spacecraft slewed west to image every 6° of Bennu’s rotation. These observations support the development of the 35-cm Stereo Photoclinometry (SPC) and 75-cm OLA shape models, the production of global image mosaics and the identification and cataloging of features for Natural Feature Tracking (NFT).