Our Earth just got clicked! MapCam camera of NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft took new images

Washington D.C, October 2: Our Earth got clicked with NASA’s unmanned spacecraft called OSIRIS-Rex. On September 22, OSIRIS-Rex’s MapCam camera clicked new pictures of Earth. The image was taken just hours after the spacecraft completed its Earth Gravity Assist at a range of approximately 106,000 miles (170,000 kilometers). MapCam is part of the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) operated by the University of Arizona. 

Visible in this image are the Pacific Ocean and several familiar landmasses, including Australia in the lower left, and Baja California and the southwestern United States in the upper right. The dark vertical streaks at the top of the image are caused by short exposure times. Short exposure times are required for imaging an object as bright as Earth but are not anticipated for an object as dark as the asteroid Bennu, which the camera was designed to image.

An unmanned NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-Rex which launched a year ago on September 8, travelling to a distant asteroid veered toward Earth for a gravitational slingshot manoeuvre that will better aim it toward the Sun-orbiting space rock, Bennu.