May 06, 2019

This last week was Week 2 of Detailed Survey: Equatorial Stations phase. For each week of this phase the spacecraft will observe Bennu from a different Local Solar Time (LST) station. At each station, the spacecraft will be centered on the equator at a distance of 5 km and will observe the asteroid for one full Bennu rotation (4.3 hours).

On May 2, the spacecraft took observations from Station 2, located at 3:20 am LST, with MapCam, OVIRS and OTES. These observations contribute to the OVIRS and OCAMS photometric models, global temperature and thermal inertia maps, and the global 35-cm SPC shape model. This position – with Bennu backlit by the sun – also provides the team with the opportunity to perform another dust plume search of the area around the asteroid.